This was turning into a huge event, we have a huge crowd turn up on the Friday Night at Waikaraka park for the Driver's Marble Draw and the Calcutta. Great to see so many people come along to support this event.
On Saturday Night you could feel the anticipation in the Midget Pit Area. 34 Midgets had come along to contest this title. There were the 14 National Midget Car Series drivers, they were working through the points table in their minds to see if they could improve their positions, and on the other hand they also were racing for the $10,000 1st place prize. Then there were the Ted Tracey Group, there were 20 of them and only 6 were going to qualify into the top 20 spots.
One of things I like about the NMCS events is that you must go to the rear of the field if you stop for any reason. Even if you were not prime cause, you go to the back, so there is none of the hundreds of laps done while drivers try and go back to a spot. It helps keep the racing moving and it also sheds an air of caution with the drivers, push hard but don't get hooked up in a crash.
There were several things that stood out for me last night. To begin with, seeing drivers like Calvin Worthington and Simon Wi drive like they did was fantastic. Calvin led the A main for nearly half the race and was a full corner ahead of the field at one point. I saw Mark Mullins drive around the outside of Shayne Alach in one of the heats. Some of these guys grew another arm and it was great to see this.Shayne was however the stand out in his group through the heats, he passed cars in both heats and I believe was the top qualifier in this group.
Brad told me on the way to the track that he wanted the 55" LCD Television which was to be awarded to the top qualifier of the NMCS Barry Butterworth Group. He won his first heat and then went on to finish 2nd in his second heat to win the TV.
Lance Beale took a big tumble in Turn One and climbed up the fence, he was OK but the car was pretty average. Nathan Smee had his own show going with flames pouring out from underneath his car, the drive line caused that so they had plenty to do to fix it.
Then we had the drivers out onto the infield in front of the crowd to organise the starting positions for the feature. Michael Pickens chose Brad to start on the back row and then Shayne was next.
As part of the pre race warm up the drivers were bought onto the track on Harley Davidson Motorbikes which they all seemed to enjoy,they were individually introduced and interviewed and then we got underway. All was going to plan until we got hooked up in the Pickens/Clarkson crash and all three were unfortunatly out. A couple of laps later I witnessed the wheel stand of the year. Hickman was on the right rear only and he didn't lift his foot. This car was standing almost upright. Then Shayne Allach had his throttle jam on the back straight. This had him enter Turn 3 wide open, he rode a wheel and he went clean over the fence into the Pits. You could have heard a pin drop. Luckily he had not hit anyone, and he was OK. This was just a miracle and thank goodness no one was hurt.
So back to the racing, Michael Kendall took the lead with around 23 laps to go and he went onto win this ahead of both Carl Worboys and Michael Brunt.
A geat way to wrap the season up, we now move to getting the car prepared to head to its new home in Australia as we have sold it.
Greg