Motorsport: F5000 clean sweep for Lyons

Young Brit Michael Lyons leads a strong MSC F5000 Tasman Cup field at Hampton Downs in his Lola T400. Photo / Fast Company,Alex Mitchell

Young gun Michael Lyons won all four MSC F5000 Tasman Cup revival series races at the New Zealand festival of motor racing at the Hampton Downs circuit south of Auckland over the weekend but Steve Ross added the icing on the cake with a new lap record.

Lyons showed an inkling of what he could do at the two festival of motor racing meetings last year, and went one better this year by claiming pole position in the qualifying session on Friday then leading all four races from start to finish.

"The weekend has gone pretty well, hasn't it?" the 20-year-old Brit said. "Last year we weren't quite as well prepared and it was all a bit last minute. Also, I hadn't really driven the car much that year.

"This year we did most of the British championship, which we won, so we were better prepared with the car so it's great to be able to come out here and be able to do so well."

After winning both races ion Saturday, Lyons led home a fired up Ken Smith, Clark Proctor and series point leader Ross in the rain-delayed third race just after lunch time and 15-lap feature final later in the afternoon.

While the third race was very much a non-event because of the intervention for four of the eight laps of the safety car, the 15-lap feature saw a cracking early pace, with Ross breaking the outright track lap record Lyons had set during on Saturday.

Heading into the meeting, the outright record for the 2.8 km circuit belonged to Smith, with a best time of 1.01.210. Lyons lowered that to 1.00.813 on the first race on Saturday but Ross went even quicker in the final on Sunday, trimming it to an 1.00.497 on just the second lap of the race.

When he found out the Dunedin man was literally lost for words before being quick to share the credit.

"I've held a few class lap records but never an outright track one," he said."All credit to the Motorsport Solutions team who prepare and run the car, they've done a brilliant job this weekend. The car was flying, absolutely flying."

- APNZ