Luke Youlden notched up an eighth place in the Powerbuilt Falcon as the final race of the fifth round of the 2007/2008 New Zealand V8s Championship was played out at Timaru International Motor Raceway this afternoon.

The final race of the penultimate round was a reverse grid event and from a midfield starting position Luke drove a patient race, working through the traffic to reach eighth. The position was hard earned and as Luke said after the race, "it is so difficult to pass and as usual I had to battle with guys who didn't want to pull over. I just had to chip away and chip away. With the penalty point situation I couldn't get too aggressive."

Virtually all the drivers coming through the field struggled to make headway around the twisty 2.4 kilometre circuit and the top positions were grabbed by those with favourable grid positions.

Earlier in the day Luke had brought the Powerbuilt Falcon home in twenty-second place in an eventful eighteen lap race. Starting from eleventh on the grid he had worked his way through to an impressive eighth place when he locked the rear brakes at the end of the back straight and slid off the circuit. Resuming at the back of the field, the remainder of the race was spent regaining positions.

After Saturday's opening race the Australian said that the team had found a change that had worked well in the wet and it was felt it would also provide gains in the dry. However that was not the case and it did not work this morning. "We lost a bit of balance," said Luke. "We went back to a set-up that we know works this afternoon and did the best we could."     

Youlden had taken a twelfth placing in Saturday afternoon's race held in wet conditions after qualifying eleventh fastest. The Australian was held up at the beginning of the race and then lost a couple of places when he locked the front brakes at the first corner after a restart.

Youlden had missed the top ten shoot-out by the narrowest of margins when he qualified eleventh on Saturday morning just .121 of a second off the tenth fastest time. "We didn't quite have the pace to make the ten. There was no one area I can pinpoint, we just weren't fast enough," he said.

The action continues next weekend at Teretonga Park in Invercargill where the final round of the 2007/2008 New Zealand V8s Championship will take place.