Photo: NZ FFord
Marco Manson was the driver to beat in the penultimate round of the New Zealand and North Island Formula Ford seasons at Hampton Downs last weekend.
The circuit’s National layout was used for the event, and Campbell Owens set the pace in practice by 0.033 seconds over Marco Manson. Toby McCormack and Maxim Kirwan were less than 0.2s back.
Manson was quickest in qualifying, edging his main title rival Sebastian Eskandari-Marandi by 0.074s and Kirwan by 0.126s. Owens was 0.272s behind in fourth, as a second covered the top nine.
The big story of the session though was Manson getting into a collision that damaged his car to a point where he had to sit out the rest of qualifying.
Manson converted pole into victory by 4.147s in race one, and despite an “average start” by his own reckoning it did not take long for Owens to get into second. He still had a battle on his hands once he took the position, and only held off Eskandari-Marandi by 0.133s.
There was a similarly close fight for fifth, with McCormack heading Toby Musico by 0.092s. Kirwan’s race unravelled early on, and and after encountering engine troubles he retired halfway through.
Race two was the next day, and Manson led lights-to-flag again. McCormack was his closest rival at first but lost out to Owens and then Kirwan in the race-second half, while Dylan Petch beat Eskandari-Marandi to fifth by 0.001s.
Manson had a harder route to victory in race three due to two safety car periods, but still had it easy compared to his title rivals.
A bad start dropped Eskandari-Marandi down the order, and contact between McCormack and Musico was the trigger of one of the safety car interruptions. McCormack had been showing race-winning pace but went on to retire, and that promoted Eskandari-Marandi back to third after he had climbed up the order on the restarts.
Up front, Kirwan did get ahead of Manson late on but they traded places again and Manson won by 0.277s.
Owens also had a dramatic race, plunging from second to 13th but recovering to seventh.
The weekend’s final race was the longest, and awarded the Ron Frost Memorial Trophy. With higher stakes came more drama, and both Manson and Owens exited the fight for victory when an attempted overtake by the former on the latter went wrong. Manson retired, while Owens fell to 11th and made up four places after that. One of those was after Izaak Fletcher retired.
Before the dramatic clash, Manson and Owens’ battle has also proved costly for them as it allowed Kirwan to get past both in a turn one move. Eskandari-Marandi then rivalled Kirwan through the race’s second half and got alongside him at the finish. Kirwan won by 0.042s, and McCormack was only 0.321s behind in third after being eighth early on. He overtook Musico late on.
Despite the non-finish, Manson left Hampton Downs with a handy points lead in NZ FFord while Owens is now atop the NI FFord standings after erstwhile leader Jack Groenewald only took one top-10 finish.
Results round-up
Race 1 (12 laps)
1 Marco Manson 14m08.421s
2 Campbell Owens +4.147s
3 Sebastian Eskandari-Marandi +4.280s
4 Dylan Petch +6.448s
5 Toby McCormack +8.472s
6 Toby Musico +8.564s
7 Jacob Begg +10.859s
8 Izaak Fletcher +13.219s
9 Matthew Basso +14.933s
10 William Beck +21.728s
Pole: Manson, 1m10.070s
Fastest lap: Manson, 1m09.948s
Race 2 (12 laps)
1 Manson 14m03.439s
2 Owens +3.955s
3 Maxim Kirwan +4.532s
4 McCormack +5.034s
5 Petch +8.825s
6 Eskandari-Marandi +8.826s
7 Musico +9.160s
8 Basso +11.157s
9 Fletcher +15.550s
10 Beck +24.456s
FL: Manson, 1m09.419s
Race 3 (11 laps)
1 Manson 16m04.015s
2 Kirwan +0.277s
3 Eskandari-Marandi +0.813s
4 Musico +1.587s
5 Begg +2.029s
6 Fletcher +2.499s
7 Owens +3.547s
8 Petch +3.851s
9 Basso +4.919s
10 Beck +5.632s
FL: McCormack, 1m09.855s
Ron Frost Memorial Trophy (15 laps)
1 Kirwan 19m33.493s
2 Eskandari-Marandi +0.042s
3 McCormack +0.321s
4 Musico +0.686s
5 Begg +1.187s
6 Petch +1.282s
7 Owens +1.429s
8 Beck +4.338s
9 Basso +4.442s
10 Jack Groenewald +4.869s
FL: Manson, 1m09.797s
NZ FFord standings
1 Manson 683 2 Eskandari-Marandi 632 3 Kirwan 592 4 Owens 576 5 Petch 518 6 Basso 470 7 Begg 459 8 Fletcher 428 9 Musico 393 10 Beck 384
NI FFord standings
1 Owens 749 2 Groenewald 704 3 Beck 618 4 McCormack 614 5 Oliver Sentch 561 6 Shane Drake 504 7 James Collie 351 8 Olivia Lorenzen 309 9 Kirwan 269 10 Eskandari-Marandi 236