Current NZV8 championship leader Angus Fogg says it’s a matter of keeping on pressing on in his bid to win his first BNT V8s Championship title.

Fogg is set to take on his fellow NZV8 competitors at the penultimate round at the Taupo Motorsport Park over the weekend of 12 and 13 March. The Auckland-based driver has a handy, but not insurmountable lead of 37 points over nearest rival Craig Baird.

“It would be nice to extend that points’ lead before we head to the championship final at Hamilton in April, particularly as you never know what’s going to happen in those street circuit races,” says Fogg. “It would be good to have a bit more of a buffer over Craig.”

Fogg says the primary goal at Taupo is to do the best possible time he can in qualifying.

“Then you’ve just got to go on and do the best you can in the three races. We don’t necessarily need to finish in front of Craig, but we certainly don’t want to be far away from him either to keep that points’ difference going in our favour.

“The LG-ZB Falcon is good to go. We were going to test at Taupo last week, but decided to concentrate on our workshop preparation where we continued to look for every possible hundredths of a second of extra speed. Also I’ve had a couple of weekends off, so I’m feeling fresh and ready to race.

“With this being the second-to-last round, it’s the point in the season where ‘friends’ and ‘foes’ can come into play for the championship contenders. It’s definitely going to be a battle right to the end, because you don’t have guys like Craig, Kayne Scott and John McIntyre in the field without this fight going down to the wire.”

Fogg joins a number of motorsport competitors across several sectors of the sport in supporting the Red Cross earthquake appeal.

“I’ve got lots of friends and family in Christchurch and we’re all thinking of them. Supporting the official Red Cross appeal is one of the most practical and useful things we can do. We and several other NZV8 drivers endorse this call to support the Red Cross by carrying a special sticker on our race cars in Taupo. We are united in our message: to support those who are best at helping so visit redcross.org.nz or text 4419 to make an instant $3 donation. We really want to encourage people to donate via the official website or text option.”

At the Taupo round, Fogg and the LG Motorsport team is in action from 10am on Saturday with the first of two test sessions before the afternoon’s all-important qualifying session. Sunday’s races start at 9:55am with a second 10-lapper scheduled for 1:50pm. This critical sixth round of the 2010-11 championship will conclude with the 20-lap reverse grid race running about 4:10pm.