[Note that the Asia-Pacific Touring Car Championship is cancelled for this
 year; however, APTCC is still an appropriate keyword for the standalone
 Wellington race.  --ed.]

The street race in Wellington, New Zealand, is going against international
trends this December by dropping the two-litre supertourers as the feature
class. Instead the meeting on December 2-3 will feature two sprint race
for the five-litre Australian V8s, ie the Holden Commodores and Ford
Falcons.

Most of the top Australians are expected to compete, starting with Peter
Brock and Tomas Mezera in the Holden Racing Team Commodores. It was
indicated at the media conference this morning that new Ausie champion
John Bowe and Dick Johnson would also be competing, in Fords. Organisers
expect about a dozen cars altogether.

The Wellington race, right on the city waterfront, has been going for
about 10 years and used to attract some top-class entries, notably the
Schnitzer BMW team. It was a round of the world touring car championship
in 1987.

More recently it was decided to move the race to the two-litre format, and
last year it was a round of the Asia-Pacific touring  car championship,
with a fairly small entry. Wellington was to have been a round of the
Asia-Pacific series again this year, but that championship was cancelled
because of poor entries. It was expected that the race would be run with
two-litre cars mainly from Australia and New Zealand, but now this class
has been dropped altogether and replaced by the V8s.

It seems there will be no NZ drivers in the feature event this year. In
particular, Paul Radisich will not be driving a V8, and Holden has ignored
the chance of putting Kiwi Greg Murphy in their second car. (Murphy is
driving for HRT -- which incidentally is part of the Tom Walkinsahw empire
-- at Sandown and Bathurst.)

There will also be a meeting for the V8s at Pukekohe (near Auckland) a
week after the Wellington event.

Bernard

Four wheels good, two wheels better

-- 
Bernard Carpinter

Four wheels good, two wheels better