The start of the Manfeild race fir -77 stones 27 - igram race prom ises to be g ale to exciting series By RUSSELL JONES Wigram motor-racing spectators. The flat-out corners, as exciting as a bend. - today it is an airfie ircuit in Australas drivers love it becau and the spectators l racing car in full ery But this year Wigram will be a little different. Usually it is the secondto-last race in Stuyvesant series but this year it is the last, and as the series winner has already been decided spectators will have a chance to see a reigaing champion in action. The cars are different too. Instead of a few big, expensive Formula 5000 V8 machines there will be a full field of the new Formula Pacific cars which are only a few seconds slower but which race wheel to wheel and are remarkably evenly matched. Keke Rosberg, the young finn who has dominated the last three Stuyvesant rounds with his brilliant is worried about the Wigram race because he knows his Chevron B34 is not as fast on the straights as Tom Gloy's Tui. "We'll be slipstreaming all the way, he says, meaning that drivers , will manoeuvre as close behind another car as possible lo get a "tow" from the leading car's slipstream. It's a dangerous and nervewracking ploy for both drivers. If the leading one misses gear he may have a visitor in his cock- : pit; and if the following one makes a small error of judgment he may be sent into an uncontrollable 'spin. Because Wigram is so different in character from other circuits in New Zealand and because some drivers are better able to deal with 160 km/h cor. ners than others, it is impossible to predict who will win the race. But one prediction is safe, and that is that the top 10 drivers will be within one or two seconds of one another during qualifying on Saturday, and the others will be only second or two slower than them. When the Motorsport Association of New Zealand decided to change the mational formula from I5000 to Formula Pacific one of its main hopes was that it would encourage more entries, and this hope has been more than fulfilled. The cars are far cheaper than the big V8 machines and cost a lot less to keep in race trim. Another benefit that small teams with limited resources can compete with good chance success. And the cars themselves are genuine racing machines. Although they are far less complicated than Formula One or even F5000 cars they are of the same basic design and are by no means easy to drive fast. All the competitors are using the same engine: a four-cylinder, twin overhead camshaft BDA Ford unit of 1600 cu cm with. twin, double-choke carburettors. These units produce more than 200 brake horsepower at more than 9000 I.p.m. and sound very exciting indeed. But the best thing about them is that they are immensely strong and therefore reliable. One of the alms of Formula Pacific is to make the cars as equal as possible so that winning and losing is decided by the driver's ability, and one way to achieve this is to limit the choice of tyres. Only one type of hardcompound slick tyre is allowed, which meatis teams do not have to go to the immense expense of finding the best combination of tyres for each Id; on Saturday it becomes the fastest ia, one loved by both drivers and se of the long straights and difficult, ove it because there is almost nothing sweeping around the tricky hangar circuit. When this situ ation exists money rules. In the tyre department Keke Rosberg has no advantage whatever over drivers working to a more restricted budget. All the cars Use the same five-speed gearbox with the same range of ratios avallable and although the cars ditter in detail design in such malters as the suspension, nose cone and rear air-foil the differences are not enough to give a winning advantage. Apart from sheer driving ability, the most critical factor in these cars is the way they are set up for each circuit. And at Wigram, particularly, driver has an advantage here. No-one has raced a Pacific car on the circuit before, so no-one knows the correct gear ratios nor the correct suspension and air-foil settings. Everyone can make a guess at what will suit the circuit, but until they try it and match their times against those of their rivals they will have no idea of how right or wrong they are, There is long, fast main straight at Wigram SO obviously they will choose a high gear. And if the air foll is set to produce as little disturbance as possible it will create less drag and allow the car to go faster. But when the cars negoliate the tricky series of corners around the control tower, hangars and loop they need every bit of and hole the way Bet, way achieve this is to have the air-foil set so that the rush of air passing over it • forces the lear wheels harder on to the track. Obviously a compromise is needed, and the driver who can find the best compromise in the short practice time available may have a winning edge. Drivers are faced with a similar paradox over suspension settings. for ine long, fast sweeping curves the suspension should i he firm but there are a number of bumps around the circuit and there needs lo he "give" in the suspension to cope with these. Again, compromise which gives good roadholding but which does not jar the car and driver to pieces is needed. And again, drivers have only d short time to decide what is best. David Oxton, a former New Zealand Gold Star champion whose Chevron was raced at Wigram last year by Brian Redman, summed up these problems when he said that in practice a driver is racing against the clock, whereas in the lace he can forget the clock but must concentrate on the 20 or so other competitors. says drivers must not fall into the trap of setting up , their cars as "sprint specials," Cars capable of one quick lap with almost empty fuel tanks. A race is 160km long and he aims to have his car set up so it will stil be fast and enjoyable to drive at the end of the race. On Saturday, spectators enjoy watching the drivers coming to grips with the circult and trying had for a lap time which will put them as near 1o the front of the grid as possible. But on Sunday, lap times mean nothing. When the pace car pulls off the circuit and the flag falls they will be racing each other, all of them aware that 160km is a long way. And all of them determined to get as much of the prize money as possible, It should be a good race. rand