Rain did not stop play at the Speedway season opening race meeting tonight at Western Springs. Auckland’s unpredictable November weather stayed true to form and the forecast heavy rain stayed away long enough for drivers to put on a spectacular first night show.

With rain threatening all evening, weather conditions were more mid-winter than the traditional spring evening that the speedway pundits would have liked. The light showers didn’t dampen crowd spirits with the drivers setting a blistering pace on what many described as the best track conditions they’d ever seen.

In an action packed Midget feature race, stars Brad Mosen and Shayne Alach fought an epic battle for the feature win. The two swapped the lead almost as many times as there were laps in the race. The two young Auckland drivers who started off the front row of the grid alongside each other fought their way through lap traffic in a nail biting duel with Mosen eventually taking the chequered flag as Alach crashed out metres away from the finish line on the last lap.

“I had an amazing car on a super quick track tonight” said an elated Mosen “Shayne is always exciting to race with and tonight we both had it going on.”

The race for 3rd place was equally fierce with Scott Buckley passing Carl Worboys and holding the lead as the pair diced their way through slower cars. Buckley inherited 2^nd place as Alach tangled with another driver on his ill fated final lap.

In a drive that went almost unnoticed, in a borrowed car, veteran Lance Beale charged from the back of the grid to take 4^th place ahead of Springs stalwart Graham Standring. After a DNF in heat race 5 Beale swapped cars with injured team mate Mark Oudney and had to start of the back in the unfamiliar car setting one of the fastest times of the race in the process.

In one of the strangest twists of official decision making ever seen at Western Springs, Bill Clarkson, who didn’t even finish the race, was placed 6^th ahead of ex TQ driver Chris McCutcheon.

Current New Zealand Champion Shaun Insley held off Tony Fabish and local driver Wayne Green who rounded out the final top ten.

One of the early race favorites Michael Pickens, fresh off the plane from an off-season racing in the USA, ran wide on lap 2 of the 25 lap feature race and slammed into the wall putting him out of the race and on the infield.

A huge crash early in the night saw Huntly’s Alvin Cobb bounce off the wall in a spectacular aerial display which flipped his smoking car end over end down the track effectively putting him out of contention for the rest of the night.

More intense racing and spectacular crash action saw the two early leaders of the Sprint Car feature race take each other out on lap 11 of the 20 lap race. Tauranga’s Dean Brindle ended up upside down after tangling with a flying Jamie McDonald who was trying to get by coming out of turn 4.

The restart saw 8 times NZ Champion Allan Wakeling take the lead and hold off a hard charging Hans Boere for the eventual win.

“It’s a great way to start the season, the car was good all night and we always love a win here at the Springs” said the veteran hard charger “ the damp weather made the track interesting but pretty racey.”

Raymond Griffen held onto third place ahead of a fast moving Mark Browne. Fifth spot went to Hamilton’s Greg Pickerill who found form after struggling with set-up earlier in the qualifying races.

Havard Daniels managed a late pass on current New Zealand Champion Carl Wilson who was fighting a damaged front wing after an earlier incident which saw Hamilton driver Tommy Rusher drive over the front of his car.

Team owner Ron Salter finished in eighth place ahead of his rookie team mate, teenager Ryan O’Conner and Auckland driver Glen Torpey.

The next race meeting is scheduled for a week’s time on Saturday 8^th November at Western Springs.

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