Sport
19 January, 2023
Speeding into 2023 half of the season
Submitted by Dean Thompson, DMT Sports Media for Horsham Speedway Drivers Club Blue Ribbon Raceway’s mega weekend of racing across the 7th and 8th of January saw over 150 race cars compete in seven different classes. On Friday night, American Alex...
Submitted by Dean Thompson, DMT Sports Media for Horsham Speedway Drivers Club
Blue Ribbon Raceway’s mega weekend of racing across the 7th and 8th of January saw over 150 race cars compete in seven different classes.
On Friday night, American Alex Panella proved to be too strong for his brother, Nikko, and secured victory over the 20 laps of the Formula 500 ‘Dash for Cash’ series event by more than two seconds.
Nikko got the better of Victoria’s Max Owen in the stoush for second spot.
Queensland champion Kayden Iverson crossed the line in fourth, with Jordan Rae, also a Victorian, in fifth place.
Seventeen of 20 starters finished the race on the lead lap.
Aston Rodriquez won his first Junior Formula 500 feature event in the racing for up to sixteen-year-olds.
Rodriguez, like Panella, led every lap, and defeated Victoria’s Koby O’Shannassy, Rusty Ponting, Maddox Gibbs and Dakota Luckett.
Round one of the Wingless Sprint Summer Slam series also competed on Friday night.
Melbourne’s Travis Millar secured the victory ahead of south-west Victoria born-and-raised Brad Warren, by just 0.456 of a second at the finish line.
South Australia’s Kirby Hillyer finished third, with New South Wales competitor Troy Carey in fourth ahead of another competitor from the south-west, Michael McDonald
Warren led 27 of the30 laps before Millar passed him to secure the lead, and the eventual victory.
Night two of action on Saturday saw the Sprintcar Racing Association cars in town for a round of their state series.
Time Trials were the first event for the Sprintcars, with veteran driver Matthew Reed at the top of the standings.
The drivers competed in one heat race each, with a top six inversion with regards to the starting position that put the faster qualifiers back on the third row.
Paul Solomon, with a 0.263 victory margin won the first heat race, with Brayden Parr winning the second qualifier.
The feature event was a cracker of a race with three different race leaders through a 30-lap nonstop race.
The first 10 laps were led by Reed, with Terry Rankin and Grant Stansfield behind him, before Rankin took the race lead on lap 11.
Rankin held the front spot in front of Reed and, not long after, in front of Stansfield until lap 23, when control of the race went to Stansfield.
Stansfield sprinted away from Rankin from there, opening up a significant margin, and as the race finished, Stansfield had a winning margin of 4.580 seconds from Rankin, Reed, Jordan Rae and Ashley Cook - all from Victoria.
The Limited Sportsman also competed on Saturday, in round one of the three-track Tri-series that will go on to visit Portland and Hamilton.
Horsham member and current Victorian and South Australian Champion Nathan Baker competed against his 16-year-old son, Tommy, for the second time, as he continues his rookie season.
The Bakers dominated the heat race action, with Nathan winning heat one and Tommy heat two.
They both stormed ahead of the field in the final, Tommy leading all 15 laps in front of his father to claim victory in round one, with Andrew Wilson from the Hamilton club in third spot.
Continuing the father-and-son theme, Horsham club member and Criminology student, Ryan Queale, won both Production Sedan heat races ahead of his father, Wimmera school teacher Shaun.
Queale-Junior went on to prove too strong for the field in the final, defeating another Horsham representative, Dean Hughes, with Hamilton racer Heath Riley third in front of Shaun Queale, and Belinda Taylor rounding out the top five.
Concluding the results was the Victorian series for the Victorian Speedway Council Sports Sedans class.
Making the trip into Horsham from Beveridge on the Hume Highway, Caleb Lincoln took his second feature victory within a month, after an earlier racing victory in Gippsland.
Although Russell Smith briefly held the race lead, on a night that many considered Smith’s best ever driving, Lincoln proved too good in the end.
Paul Blake from Ballarat finished third ahead of Zac Swanson, also from Ballarat, while overall points leader Felicity Roycroft consolidated her lead at the top with a fifth-place finish.
Blue Ribbon Raceway will next see action on February 4, when the 360ci All Star Sprintcars return on the same night we hold the Robin Thomas Memorial for our V8 Trucks.
Production Sedans and Vintage classes will also support the main event action.