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Toyota Racing Series driver Sam MacNeill - Source: ONE Sport -
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Hi team,
As most of you know I competed at round two of the TRS in Timaru over the weekend.
It was a frustrating event for me in the end because of a poor performance in qualifying, basically ending any hope of great results.
Timaru was the first round of the International segment of the series and Will Stevens (UK), William Buller (UK) and Aderley Fong (China) joined the two Australian's already here to make the TRS field one of the most competitive in a number of years.
I was very happy on Friday night to have been fastest in practice, and was pretty confident that I could put the car on pole and win some races, however I was taught a lesson in how to maximise new tyres in qualifying by the international guys.
They were able to go out the gate and hit their best times straight away when the tyres were at their best, whereas it took me until the last lap of the session to set my time. In the end I was 3 tenths of a second off pole, which was only good enough for place six!
To give you an idea of how competitive the field is my time was 6 tenths of a second under the lap record - yet still only good enough for 6th.
There's not a lot to say about the racing, other than that Timaru is very difficult to pass on, and with the top six being so close basically where you were sitting after turn one was where you were going to finish, and for me that was three fifth placings.
I am still third overall in the championship but now 50 points off the lead (75 points for a win). I can't wait to get to Invercargill this weekend, where I think I'm going to have to scare myself a bit by going out of the comfort zone in qualifying!
Full results of the TRS can be seen on my website now.
Talk to you soon,
Sam MacNeill
