HARD AND FAST RULES

By Pete McNae

Brett Nicholls left nothing to chance. On a night when the Speedway New Zealand officials had to make a number of trips up and down the control tower stairs, Nelson superstock veteran Nicholls took the law into his own hands.

The occasion was the second night of the PTS Superstock Stampede meeting, one of the features on the 2021-22 calendar at the Milestone Homes Top of the South Speedway. And in a quality field, Nicholls banked some PTS prize money and proved that his knowledge of the Nelson track is second to none.

After Friday's few defections meant qualification for the Stampede was a little hollow, with all entered and available cars going straight to the winner-takes-all final, tonight's meeting still had meaning. There was an open race for the 22 survivors, followed by a reverse grid, with the top 10 cars going into a 10-lap shootout to determine the first five rows of the grid for the final. That was a 15-lapper with the first driver across the line crowned the Stampede champ.

The first of the open races was taken out by Wellington's Keegan Levien with Nicholls, from the front row, pushing through for second with Hawke's Bay-domiciled but Auckland-registered Randal Tarrant rounding out the top three. Defending champion Harley Robb had a potshot at fellow Cantabrian Cameron Godfrey, Lloyd Jennings got turned around and hit by oncoming traffic and Jake Berry also had a rough time of it. Palmerston North's Ron Tye was trailered for exceeding noise limits but, on the positive side, Nelson's Phil Krammer had a great run for fourth in just his second meeting back in the class.

The flipped grid second heat was taken out by Robb with Stratford's Tyler Walker and Dale Robertson from Wellington the best of the chasers. Berry was pinballed around just past the tower and out of the meeting with Godfrey also in strife. Nelson's Adam Hall had suffered engine issues late in race one and wasn't sighted again until the final as his crew thrashed to make repairs while the weekend never went the way of clubmates Alex Hill and Ian Clayworth.

Points from those races counted towards the top 10 shootout and, while the track was in vastly better condition than the previous evening, a good grid position for the final was worth pushing for. Robb led out, but was passed by Walker, who won the race from Nicholls with Robb in third.

With Berry, Tye and Shane Brooks out of the final and Hall making it onto the track but not onto the grid, it was an 18-car field for the Stampede final with Robb elbowing through from the second row to lead four of the first seven laps. Running up closer to the wall, Nicholls shook off Walker and swapped the lead with Robb until the 991C car drifted infield and out of the race with a broken driveshaft on lap 8 and Nicholls stayed there right through until the chequer after lap 15.

Nicholls is no novice but he's had some big damage and awful luck on other occasions and his delight at winning the PTS Stampede on his home track was clearly apparent. Walker and Keegan Levien ran second and third, with former 1NZ Tarrant in fourth ahead of second-season Canterbury driver Tom Cooper.

The winner take all format doesn't fit most championship contact racing, when three heats and accumulated points are deemed a fairer formula but at least spectators left the track knowing who won. Sadly, we couldn't be as crystal clear with a couple of the other major promotions with exclusions, protests, fines and stand-downs tainting the Cando Fishing Ministock Mania while the Streetstock Triple Crown, presented by Richmond Exhaust and Radiator Specialists, was held up by the need to check lap scoring on a couple of competitors.

The youth ministocks had opened up their championship on Friday with group racing and points carrying over to tonight to find a winner in each of the experienced and novice grades. With internet banter spilling over into pit chat which became on-track aggression, there were long delays in making it all official. Anyone who watched the meeting in person – or on The Pits Media livestream – will have seen deliberate contact escalate through the meeting, resulting in two driver exclusions and stand-downs, one long-winded and, frankly, futile protest and a trailer burnout that was set to cost one visitor his pocket money.

The somewhat sour conclusion didn't obscure the near-flawless meeting for Nelson's Jack Burson, overall winner of the experienced grade after he topped up his Friday tally with two more wins and a pair of second placings. One of those runner-up finishes came as the last race was called with Harlen Brunt leading when he was taken hard to the wall by a visiting driver. Brunt was able to carry the chequered flag while being towed on his victory lap but, with ministocks and ministock drivers not built for big contact, it was an unhappy end to a popular promotion. Once all the official wrangling was complete, the experienced class was won by Burson ahead of Canterbury's Ben McSweeney and Blake Hearne (Nelson) with Conley Webley taking the novice trophy and McKenzie Keene in second.

The streeties just turned in good, hard racing, plenty of damage, lots of sideways stuff and a good helping of grubby entertainment. Fantastic support from Dunedin and Canterbury drivers provided a format in which the field was divided up to put one driver from each of the three tracks in a triples combination with points gathered over both nights. Canterbury's Mike Jones and local racer Greg Taylor copped a battering but kept coming back, with provisional race wins for Dave McSherry, Paul Leslie and Dunedin's Ben Jenkins who pipped Nelson's Ryan Musgrove on the last lap. The winning triple was the combination of Dunedin driver Benji Smaill, Canterbury's Jones and Cody McCarrison, representing Nelson. Jenkins was the overall leading point scorer and class stirrer.

It was much more straightforward in the open club championship for stockcars with Wade Sweeting maintaining his season streak at Nelson. He didn't win all the heats but he won enough to be crowned the champion ahead of his heat two conqueror James Thian, with a third Canterbury driver, Braydon Lennon, in third. Thian was also the only driver to look likely to give Sweeting some bumper but then had his hands full later with Roydon Winstanley.

The sidecar class has prudently parked up after one race on Friday when the track chopped up but managed three races last night before any other class got out there to bugger things up. Rob and Harly Martin won two of the three with Brent Steer and Wade Thorn splitting the flag with a win in heat two.

The last class on the programme was the historic stockcars, who came from around the country with the backing of Donaldson Civil. Twelve of the timeless classics started the meeting on Friday, all 12 were still running by the end of Saturday and there was plenty of good-hearted track talk to balance out what was happening among the younger generation – some 50 years younger. The Palmerston North combination of Dave Evans, Charlie Harper, Malcolm (Farmer) Clausen and Brent Goulding came out on top of a three-way teams race with 180 points, with Nelson's Knockers (I kid you not) on 151 over the Best of the Rest of the North Island's 115.

The final set of sashes was handed out to pairings of ministock drivers and a superstock partner for their efforts across the weekend. Winners overall were Tyler Walker with his ministock mate Anthony Pritchard from Wellington with second going to the Ethan Levien/Jack Burson combination and third place for the Dale Robertson/Cole Phillips pairing.

That's it for the Nelson Speedway Association until after New Year when the next scheduled meeting is the Specialised Structures Dirt Masters Super Saloon Cup on January 8.

Photos: Rebecca Connor Maling, BM Photography

Article added: Saturday 11 December 2021