Fogg Loses Bnt V8 Title Fight At Last Hurdle

Fogg Loses Bnt V8 Title Fight At Last Hurdle

Angus Fogg has had to settle for second place in this year's BNT V8s Championship after a gearbox problem hobbled the LG-ZB Ford Falcon on the second day of competition at the final round in Hamilton over the weekend.

After winning the first BNT V8s Championship race at the big ITM 400 meeting round the streets of Hamilton on Saturday the Aucklander further extended his long-held lead in the series points standings, meaning all he had to do was finish three places behind former series title holder John McIntyre in Sunday's two races to make the 2010/11 title his.

However after again beating fellow front row starter McIntyre off the line in the second race of the weekend on Sunday morning Fogg ended up losing the series points’ lead to McIntyre when the car’s gearbox blew second gear, meaning Fogg was lucky just to be able to finish the race in 20th place.

Then in the incident-shortened 16-lap grand final in the afternoon McIntyre ran away to claim the win and 2010/11 championship title as Fogg - who started from sixth on the grid and finished third - spent the race embroiled in a no-holds-barred battle for one of the other two podium places with Andy Booth, Eddie Bell, Scott McLaughlin and Wade Henshaw.

Having held the championship points lead for so long it seemed a particularly cruel twist of fate for Fogg to suffer a gearbox problem at such a critical time but the series veteran says you can't look at it like that.

"That's how it goes, isn't it, and you can't put it down to just the one thing, you have to look at it over the whole season and if you do that, all sorts of things, not just for us either, for everyone else in the field, come into play because the championship is so close and the calibre of the guys and the teams in it is so high.

"Every year it comes down to the last race and this year the difference between John and I could have been one point. It wasn't but it wasn't much more and, you know, that was a fantastic battle Boothie and I had in that last race and in a lot of ways it made up for the disappointment I was feeling as I could see the championship title going out the door."

As it turned out, McIntyre claimed the title with 1148 points, 26 more than Fogg and 84 more than eventual third place-getter and defending title holder Craig Baird.

The LG-ZB Falcon team is supported by LG Electronics, Newstalk ZB, Mount Shop, Strapping Systems (NZ) Ltd, Fromm Packaging Systems, Q-West Boats, Pit Stop, Arnott’s Shapes, Affordable Partsworld, Segedin’s Auto Spares, Porter Group, Hydraulink, NZV8 Magazine, Suzuki NZ, Brenics Transport, Transvisual Panel & Paint, Punch Advertising, Delo, Waitemata Hydraulics & Engineering Supplies and iSign it.

Follow the team’s progress on: http://www.foggy.co.nz or search for Angus Fogg Racing on Facebook.

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