Caughey goes the extra mile to maintain points lead

Caughey goes the extra mile to maintain points lead

Kaikoura road closed again, but ENZED team gets through

Defending NZ SuperBoat champion Peter Caughey was already en route for the Picton ferry with round four of the MouthFresh SuperBoat championship at Hastings on March 11 in his sights, when landslips hit SH1.

“I could see Kaikoura, we were that close, and they closed the road. So what started out this morning as a leisurely four-hour drive through Kaikoura to Picton has become a bit of a mission. It’ll take nine hours to get to Picton, and we’ve missed our sailing.”

But you don’t win multiple championships without determination. Caughey has five world SuperBoat titles and nine NZ SuperBoat titles under his belt, and he rang the Interislander, “They cut us some slack and created a space.”

He also rang the owner of the Hastings track. “With the torrential rain they’ve had we thought we’d better get an update. They’d only had 75mm – 10km down the road it was 300mm and flooding – so the racing is on, and the forecast is sunny for Sunday.”

There’ll be a full SuperBoat field for the Altherm Window Systems NZ championship.

“Rob Coley with his Nissan twin-turbo will be fast. It’s not a big track, and like all of them it has some technical aspects, but with good boat control and the right lines it’s a very fast, flowing track with one of the toughest hairpins you’ll see on a jetsprint circuit.”

Caughey’s seen the island rotation for this round, and says it will let some of the high-powered boats really strut their stuff.

“Richard Burt will race again at this event, the fourth round of this year’s championship and he’ll have raced in four different SuperBoats, none of them his own.”

That might be a bit of a record, and Caughey is keen to see how he goes in yet another unfamiliar boat. “This weekend he will race the Glen Head Altherm Sprintec, but he has two motors prepared, Glen’s twin-turbo or his 600 big-block Chev.”

“There’s heaps of competition, all the usual suspects, and we suspect it will be a great show, the track should let some of the boats really put in a flying time.”

Caughey’s ENZED crew flies in tomorrow, and though he’ll be late into Wellington, he’ll still be on target for Saturday’s schedule, leading into Sunday’s round.

With Caughey leading the points so far, he’ll be keen to get back on track as the team preps for the green flag come Sunday.

Provisional results, top 10 after three of six rounds
MouthFresh SuperBoat championship

1 Peter Caughey 90
2 Rob Coley 78
3 Nick Berryman 76
4 Sam Newdick 69
5 R Murray 68
6 Aaron Hansen 65
7 Baden Gray 61
8 Ted Sygidus 57
9 Scott Donald 5
10 P Thompson 53

Altherm Window Systems NZ Championship - 2017/2018:

Round 4 - Hastings March 11, 2018
Round 5 - Meremere March 24, 2018
Round 6 – Waitara April 14, 2018

Further info:

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