Smeatharpe Stadium - Sunday 14th April 2013

Report by Steve Linfield

Despite a pessimistic local weather forecast, it was dry and sunny for the most part for the mid-April offering at Smeatharpe which featured the BriSCA F2 Stock Cars for the annual ‘Remembering Rog’ meeting, the Stock Rods English Championship, Saloon Stock Cars and for the first time ever at the track the Double Decker Bangers.

BriSCA F2 Stock Cars

The entry for the F2’s was once again very pleasing, indeed had there been a few less no shows it could have been the best of the season to date.  It did include National Points Champion 7 Gordon Moodie, who keeps a promise to attend this meeting each year and this time it was extra impressive as he missed meetings far closer to his Scottish base at Barford and Buxton to be present.  Easter Monday Final winner 886 Chris Bradbury was fresh from a Final win at Coventry the previous evening and debuted his new RCE chassis.   The battle between Moodie and Bradbury was a feature of heat one, which ended when the latter tangled with 14 Mike Priddle and this left Moodie clear to take the win.  The second heat saw 522 Chris Mikulla return from his wrist injury sustained last month to take the win whilst a yellow flag strewn consolation saw the star grade domination continue when 700 Adam Rubery came through for victory.  Moodie was a non-starter in the Final as his engine lost power on the rolling lap, which obviously removed a favourite straight away.  The race was headed off by 575 Tom Clark, but 783 James Rygor made light work of the yellow grade to lead before the halfway stage.  Bradbury was looking very quick and moved ahead of the rest of the star men, but Rygor, who was the winner of the event last year, looked like he might be hard to catch.  However a yellow flag when 430 Simon Edwards and Rubery came together and then another for a group of cars that crashed on the exit of turn four changed all that and put Bradbury right in contention with Rygor.  He made the move successful on the second attempt and went on to take the win.  Rygor, who is the new owner of Bradbury’s previous car, was second and 315 Justin Fisher got the better of 596 Richie Mead to take third on the last lap.   A shower of rain made the track slippery for the Grand National which featured a grid of 33 cars.   There were two complete re-starts but when it did get going it went all the way and Bradbury impressively fought his way up to third place from his lap handicap but was unable to catch 254 Richard Beere and winner Rygor, whose points earned guaranteed him a first time superstar for the May re-grades.

Stock Rods

It was the first time the Stock Rod English Championship had been raced for at Smeatharpe, but the fourth time staged by Autospeed.  There was a good entry of cars, even if the allocation from other ORCi promotions was not fully met which allowed the chance for all of our own drivers to race.  The format was three heats with each driver racing in two and a reverse grid random draw determining where they lined up.  The first put the vastly experienced 447 Stuart Smyth on pole position and he duly turned that into a race win whilst teenager 74 Tyler Collison took the victory in heat two.  257 Ashley Brown, on his first ever appearance at the track took a convincing win in heat three.  The points scored from the heats put Collison on pole position with top Autospeed qualifier 909 Justin Washer on his outside (and one of only two drivers present not Vauxhall mounted) The second row had Smyth and 136 Steve Gooch and the third row 257 Brown and another big danger man 168 Andy Sturt.     With light rain falling, the dry heats had been replaced by a slippery track.  However, this didn’t account for Collison’s somewhat obvious jump start which unsettled Washer and earned 74 an early black cross from the Steward.   Smyth came through the gap to take the lead early on and then pulled further and further clear.  Collison held on for second for some time before Sturt found his way past and then 669 Ed Trofer went through too.  Just as it looked like Smyth was cruising to a win by at least a length of a straight there was a yellow flag when both 92 Adam Daniels and 624 Ady Taylor became stranded on turns three and four.  This closed all the gaps up and put Sturt right on his great rival Smyth for the re-start.  Excitement was promised, but aided by the slippery concrete track, was not really delivered as try as he might, Sturt had no answer for Smyth who went on to take the title for a record sixth time.  Trofer was third.

Saloon Stock Cars

The Saloon Stock Car entry was again boosted by some great travelling efforts, none more so than 620 Aryn Triggs from Scotland, counteracting some of the more local drivers who were not present.  One of the travellers on a first appearance in a Saloon at least was 217 Sid Madgwick and he very nearly took heat one but for a textbook last bend lunge to victory from World Champion 1 Eddie Darby.  However, the latter ended with a taste of his of his own medicine in the second heat as he was on the other end of a last bend move, this time from  120 Shane Brown as they battled for second but could do nothing about Madgwick ahead who duly took his maiden Saloon Stock Car win.   The Final was led by 20 Craig Rose until Madgwick took over and then 207 Darren Bradford moved ahead of him.  A yellow flag for stranded cars on the home straight proved to be no hurdle for the former champion and he went on to take his second Final win in recent weeks.   Brown got the measure of Darby this time to come through for second whilst for Eddie it was another last bend lunge on Madgwick, this time for the other trophy position.

Double Decker Bangers

The Double Decker Bangers saw six pairs arrive and certainly played their part and entertained those looking on with some rollovers and near miss/wobbles.  The masters who had none of that though were 242 Ben Ellacott and 929 Sam Baker who went to a hat-trick of wins, although the due of 71 Scott Stevens and 205 Daz Saunders did try their best to stop them in the Final, but to no avail.