James Penrose has won a bizarre opening race of the 2019/20 ITM NZ Formula Ford Championship. The race only saw one racing lap completed with the rest completed under the safety car.
A clean start off the line saw Penrose take the early lead. Despite running two-wide through turn one through the entire field, no-one came unstuck or banged wheels.
At the end of the back straight, into turn five, Brody McConkey locked up and collected Thomas Boniface in an unfortunate incident. The contact turned Boniface around on the grass leaving him stranded while McConkey retired to the pits.
The incident prompted the release of the safety car as the car approached the completion of the first lap. Upon the restart on lap five, a technical fault with the track lights saw the yellow light iluminated whilst the green flags were waving, causing confusion amongst the drivers.
Adding to the drama of the race, as the cars completed the lap they were greeted with a last minute safety car, with the actual safety car on the circuit at a much earlier point than usual, prompting emergency braking from the train of drivers. The majority of the field avoided incident apart from Alex Hawley, who made light contact with the wall and Blake Evans who spun on the final corner.
The race then finished under safety car, with Penrose crossing the line first. Zac Stichbury finished second with Callum Crawley coming through to third from the back end of the grid.
Billy Frazer would too move from the rear of the field to finish in fourth ahead of Bailey Paterson. Blake Evans finished sixth with Australian racer Andrew McInnes claiming seventh.
Ronan Murphy, orginally finishing third, ended the race eighth after receiving a five-second penalty for a false start. Jordan Mountfort took ninth place with Kaleb Ngatoa, who too fell back after a penalty, took tenth.
Keith Miller ended the race 11th ahead of Cameron Tanner who finished well inside the top ten before receiving a penalty. Alex Hawley, Brody McConkey and Thomas Boniface all failed to finish.