Battling through torrential downpours, two Otago teams finished on the three-hour race's podium in the New Zealand Endurance Championship at Pukekohe Park in Auckland.
The class two winners, Queenstown's Barry Moore and Dunedin driver Tim Mackersy, were ''super happy'' to achieve eighth overall in their newly-imported Volkswagen Golf GTi TCR on Saturday, Moore said.
They had been only able to do minimal testing in the VW TCR and the South Auckland track was foreign turf but the pair hung on in the rain to eventually win by five laps over the next in their class.
''It was pretty bad weather, for sure. Right at the end, it was more of a case of just hang on rather than try to be fast,'' Moore said.
He and Mackersy had won the South Island Endurance Series' class two late last year in an older model VW but this victory was even sweeter, due to the race being at the other end of the country, accomplished in an unfamiliar car and in terrible conditions.
''It probably meant even more to win because of all the effort to get there,'' Moore said.
Dunedin brothers Stu and Arron Black could not repeat their 2017 national class three, three-hour race victory in their BMW E46 after a tyre gamble failed to pay off and resulted in them finishing third in class.
''We were the only stupid ones that put on slicks halfway through,'' Arron said, with a laugh.
The rain had eased as they pitted and a dry line was appearing on the track, so they reasoned that fine-weather tyres would give them a boost up the field. Unfortunately ,it began to pour shortly after Stu left the pits for his turn at the wheel.
Driving Stu's same model but lighter BMW in the one-hour race, the Blacks were victorious in class three which was some consolation, Stu said.
''That's the one we weren't counting on winning.''
Simon Evans and Callum Quin in a Holden VF Commodore won the three-hour race, while Shane Hodgson won the one-hour event in a Ford Falcon ex-V8 Supercar.
