After a run of ill fortune over the past two rounds of the 2017 Castrol Toyota Racing Series, Brendon Leitch halted the sequence in the best possible fashion with a race win during Round 4 of the series at Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park at Taupo at the weekend.
Leitch, originally from Invercargill but now based in Cromwell, had qualified third in his ITM FT-50 for the opening race of the weekend and made a good start to slot into second behind fellow kiwi, Marcus Armstrong of the Ferrari Driver Academy. After trailing Armstrong for several laps Leitch began to apply some pressure and took the lead late in the race to take a popular victory, his first of this year’s series.
He backed it up with two solid results on Sunday, starting sixth on the grid in the morning race before working his way into fifth at the flag in a race won by Pedro Piquet of Brazil. In the feature event, the Denny Hulme Memorial Trophy race, from seventh on the grid he finished eighth after a massive dice with Red Bull Junior programme driver, Richard Verschoor of the Netherlands, in a race won by Armstrong.
Leitch had been fast all weekend, recording the second fastest time in each of Thursday’s practice sessions and maintaining the pace on Friday and into qualifying.
Leitch was elated after a much better run than of late. Of Saturday’s win he said, “I got a good start and kept the pressure on Marcus (Armstrong). I could see he was becoming more erratic and then the pressure told. It was pretty cool after a terrible round last weekend and a good confidence boost. I had good pace in the ITM FT-50 all weekend. The battle with Richard (Verschoor) in the Denny Hulme Memorial Trophy Race was one of the best I have had. It was a really good dice, we were touching at times.”
Leitch has now moved to seventh in the series points.
The series now moves to Manfeild in Feilding next weekend where the feature race is the New Zealand Grand Prix.