[William Dale Jr]

I've finally had a chance to go through my ever-expanding collections of Auto Action, and here's what they had on the Simpson series. Co-drivers weren't always mentioned in race reports so there may be a few omissions, but a few drivers did usually drive single-handed (including Crowe, Hulme, and Francevic).

Incidentally, all the races began with a rolling start. Was this common practice in NZ?

Round 1 @ Manfield, on November 30

Position	Number	Driver/s	Car	Race Time/Laps	Retirement Cause	Qualifying Time	Grid Position
1	6	Graeme Crosby / Wayne Wilkinson	Holden Commodore VK	131 laps		1m13.91s	1
2	31	Trevor Crowe	BMW 635CSi	131 laps		1m15.28s	3
3	4	Per-Gunnar Andersson / Gary Croft	Volvo 240T	130 laps		1m15.31s	4
4	25	Denny Hulme	BMW 325i	129 laps			8
5	7	Charlie O'Brien / Glenn McIntyre	BMW 635CSi	127 laps		1m15.53s	5
6		Dave Barrow	Toyota Corolla	126 laps
7	17	Robbie Ker / Wayne Huxford	Ford Mustang	126 laps			10
8	1	Robbie Francevic	Ford Sierra XR4Ti	123 laps		1m14.35s	2
9		Ed Lamont	BMW 325i	123 laps
10		John Billington / Chris Castle	Holden Commodore VK	122 laps
	5	Allan Grice / Graeme Bowkett	Nissan Skyline DR-30			1m15.58s	6
		Alan Prince / Mike Hourigan	Jaguar XJ-S				7
		Inky Tulloch / Winston Wrigley	Rover Vitesse				9
DNF	33	Bruce Anderson / Wayne Anderson	Ford Mustang		alternator
DNF		Trevor McLean	Holden Commodore VK		gearbox

There were 35 entries for the race, including 13 under-1600cc cars (10 of which were Corollas), but only 27 arrived at the circuit.

It rained throughout the race, making the outfield particularly boggy and the track particularly treacherous. Most had trouble getting heat into their tyres; Crowe and the Skyline both ran throughout on one set of wets!

Croz took pole (his first on 4 wheels) and drove off into the distance. His only challange came during lap 1 from Andersson, but contact between the pair sent the Volvo sideways and down through the field. The Francevic Sierra went out with a broken turbo actuator rod. Grice went off into the mud trying to lap a slower car and lost many laps being recovered, before mechanical woes slowed the car toward the end.

Under 1600cc class positions:

1		Dave Barrow	Toyota Corolla
2		Bruce Fowler / Kirk Stoneman	Toyota Corolla
3		Warren Burt / Jeff Pascoe	Toyota Starlet
?	46	Andrew Bagnall / Bob Holden	Toyota Corolla

Under 2500cc class positions:

1		Denny Hulme	BMW 325i
2		Ed Lamont	BMW 325i
3		I Schuler	Isuzu Gemini ZZ

Also entered was John English/Dennis Roderick in a BMW 635CSi, but it didn't appear at the meeting.