INDEPENDENT NEWS

Clean Sweep For Stichbury

Published: Mon 12 Nov 2001 09:49 AM
Ashley Stichbury gave Ford fans something to cheer about at the Boost Mobile V8 International race meeting when he drove his Meguiar's Falcon to three victories in each of the NZ V8 Tourer support races. Stichbury headed home a field of 45 cars in each of three races that combined the NZ V8s with a field of 2.0 litre Touring Cars. He was chased to the flag in each of the Karcher support races by the Holden Commodores of Andy Booth and Andrew Anderson, flying the Blue Oval brand high in a weekend where Holden dominated the premier V8 Supercar class.
In the TraNZam class, Stichbury gave the new Meguiar's Corvette of the Mark Petch Motorsports team a brief yet promising debut. The immaculate silver and black Corvette started off the back of the grid for the second of the TraNZam races, after missing the first race on Saturday. Stichbury charged through the field to take fourth by the end of the first lap, then elbowed Mark Porter out of third while entering the esses on the second lap. The two cars made contact, and their coming together undid the clips holding the fibreglass roof of the Corvette. When the TraNZam reached a speed of 270 km/h on the back straight, the force of the air popped all the rivets left holding the roof, and the Coupe body suddenly became a roadster just as Stichbury started to brake for the hairpin. The flying roof took all the air off the rear wing of the Corvette, and Stichbury spun in spectacular fashion before making a good recovery. When the Mustang of Grant Silvester hit the roof in a later passing move at the braking area, it ended the debut of the new TraNZam Stuchbury will take to the US to contest the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) Trans-Am series.
Ends

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