Baker leads Mazda series

The 2022/23 Nexen Tyre

Mazda Racing Series is angling towards a spectacular national final.

The championship’s southern series has finished early with two rounds of the northern series still to run.

In the North Island championship, the title chase is led by Rex Edwards. He’s followed by Simon Baker with Flynn Mullany and Matt Horne tied for third.

In the south, the cancellation of the final round confirms Chris

White Jnr as champion ahead of Matt Dodd and Shane Paget.

The overall final runs at Hampton Downs in north Waikato from April 21-23. Baker is leading the national championship charge with White Jnr a close second and Leo Bult holding onto third.

The Mazda Racing Series, which was established in 1992, is New Zealand’s oldest accredited championship. It began with the original Series 1 RX-7.

The current series attracts entries of 40 or more cars per wins – you can’t get a much better start than that. We were pretty sure we had good pace coming into the weekend.”

Giltrap describes the third race as “pretty hectic”.

“It was a long one. There was a bit of tyre conservation and then the traffic got involved and we sort of slipped back to second.

“We knew we had the pace round. Its top class uses the RX-8 rotary-engined sports car, which provides an affordable basis for motorsport modification.

RX-8 racing was a new schedule introduced from the 2013/14 season. It was designed to allow for the category’s future progression towards the end of the race. We kept strong and, ultimately, we came out on top.”

Round two of the Porsche Michelin Sprint Challenge Australia series sees the field head to Queensland Raceway in Willowbank, racing alongside the Australian Superbike Championship from April 28-30.

Race 1: 1st Marco Giltrap (NZ)

2nd Aron Shields

3rd Lachlan Bloxsom

4th Harrison Goodman

5th Ronan Murphy (NZ)

Race 2: 1st Aron Shields

2nd Marco Giltrap (NZ)

3rd Harrison Goodman

4th Zac Stichbury (NZ)

5th Ronan Murphy (NZ)

Race 3: 1st Marco Giltrap (NZ)

2nd Ronan Murphy (NZ)

3rd Harrison Goodman

4th Zac Stichbury (NZ)

5th Hamish Fitzsimmons using the same philosophy as Pro7 has maintained.

The core ideals of RX-8 racing are low entry costs, and minimal and regulated modifications designed to place the emphasis on driver skills above financial advantage.