Lapping the revised Hamilton street circuit layout almost two seconds a lap faster than the Australian V8 Supercars, Wootten was in fine form throughout the event. Consistently setting lap times in the top five throughout qualifying his progress in race one was thwarted by a sticking throttle that caused a minor incident when he was unable to pull the car up from 250 km/h at the end of the main straight, running wide and making contact with another car, unfortunately putting an end to his race on lap 2 when running strongly in fourth place and challenging for third.

 

“I was really lucky when the throttle jammed at the end of the main straight” commented Alastair back in his pit garage after the race one retirement. “It was a fairly decent impact when I hit the car that was on the outside of me, but I think it would have been a lot worse if I’d hit the wall. Even though there was a lot of damage to the front of the car my engineers and mechanics were able to get everything back to almost as good as new for the final on Sunday”.

 

For the final race on Sunday morning Alastair was starting out of grid 5, and when the lights went out he made an excellent start to immediately get onto the tail of the leading bunch. After four laps the leading group of five had established a break on the rest of the field and started to battle amongst themselves. After applying some pressure to the two cars in front by lap 10 Wootten had worked himself into a solid third place, although by now series champion Mitch Cunningham had moved into fourth place behind him and was shadowing his every move.

 

However on lap 12 the race changed dramatically when Woottens’ teamate Sam McNeill slammed the wall hard bringing out the safety car for the first time in the race. With only 2 laps now remaining the officials took the decision to finish the race under the yellow flag and behind the safety car.

 

Asked how he felt after the race Alastair had this to say. “ I’m so pleased with the result, the pace was really hot out there today and especially knowing how hard my guy’s had worked to get me onto the grid today this is just fantastic. These last three events I’ve really got to grips with the car and the results are coming so now I just can’t wait for next summer as I really think that I can challenge for the championship and bring it home to Whangaparaoa”.