Big fields for Easter speedway and drags

MOTORSPORT

PATRICK HAMILTON/Nelson Mail

UNLEASHED: The Trevor Tolhurst-Alan Ryder team will have their Corvette in action in Motueka on Saturday.

PATRICK HAMILTON/Nelson Mail

CRUNCHED: Peter Rees takes to Nelson's Dennis Andreassend in an earlier visit to Nelson's speedway.

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What do a midget class champion from Auckland and a Ford Falcon racer from Gore have in common? They're both hauling huge distances to Nelson for an Easter motorsport extravaganza - the annual feasting on fossil fuels at the Tahuna Beach Holiday Park Speedway and the Rock 94.6FM Dragway.

With their summer seasons drawing to a close, organisers within the Nelson Speedway Association and Nelson Drag Racing Association have been working the phones to bring big fields of competitors here.

The speedway has scheduled two nights of competition, Friday at 7pm and Saturday at 5pm, while the drag racers have squeezed into the slot in the middle from 11am on Saturday.

The speedway leads the way with its top of the south championships for all classes on Friday, breaking an Easter tradition by racing on Good Friday for the first time. Nine classes have been scheduled, with the superstocks and stockcars being carded as separate fields.

Leading the programme will be the final of the Barry Butterworth midget series, featuring a class that has fallen through the cracks in Nelson this season. Despite having just two Nelson drivers listed (Andrew Brown and Paul Quinn), a strong 19-car field has entered, with five-time national champion Michael Kendall of Auckland leading the way. Although Kendall is not in contention for Butterworth honours, he could be the spoiler for the southern pacesetters.

The TQ midget field has been fully subscribed at 21 while the sidecars have also capped their class and attracted the Wanganui pairing of Craig Scott and Tony Willemsen. Streetstock racing should see a resumption of the civil war between Nelson's seven cars and Blenheim's eight.

The super saloons are hoping to draw an even field of 10, with the likes of Ian Burson, Shane Carey and Neville Wood attempting to defend local honour against travellers from Blenheim and Greymouth. The production saloons have also drawn competitors from Marlborough and Westport in a 19-strong field.

That leaves just the three levels of stockcars, with the youth ministocks concentrating on Nelson's teen talent as the stockcars and superstocks welcome the imports. Doing double duty will be one of the sport's top drawcards, former national champion Peter Rees, entering both his Holden V6 stockcar and the Nissan V8 superstock that carried him to 2NZ last season. Rees is one of the hardest hitters in the sport, as Dennis Andreassend's casualty nurses can confirm.

Joining Rees and Nelson's own well-performed superstocks will be the current 3NZ, Darryl Taylor of Wanganui, Palmerston North's Darryl Hammond, and Billy Richardson and Matt Boulton from Blenheim.

The stockcar field is a blend of Blenheim and Nelson cars, along with Rees and Greymouth's Dave (Towbar) Terris. Saturday's programme features open races for all classes, with the earlier start time of 5pm.

Many competitors will continue on to race the third leg of the treble at Blenheim's Eastern States Speedway from 5pm on Sunday.

Drag racing The North Island has it and the south wants its back, badly.

Saturday's meeting at the Motueka airport dragstrip features the annual challenge for the Keith Whiting Memorial Trophy, snaffled by the north on the strength of its strong dragbike contingent last Easter.

Those bikes will be back on Saturday, with Ian Hilder, Ian Wilkins and Ian Taylor's 8sec machines being joined by Dean Veale's turbocharged outlaw bike. They'll take on Nelson's Tristan Scalmer, Craig Wray and the Motueka X-Treme Force team.

Across in the competition car ranks, the South Island has bigger guns but fewer bullets, struggling to match the number of North Island drivers willing to travel but boasting the quicker cars in John Gourdie's fuel-injected Ford T and Evan Nicol's supercharged Ford Popular pickup. Both are capable of low 8sec passes.

Packing plenty of power, Gore's Frank Wilson and Mike Wilson from Christchurch in mega-motored Ford Falcons will butt heads with the similar machines of Gary Cawthra and Rex Margetts, while Mike Reid (9sec Nissan ute), Martin McSweeney and Rick Kerkhof in Holden utes and Graham Allen's Ford Maverick give the north strength in numbers.

The "home team" can counter with the 9sec competition cars of Wayne Stirling, Greg Delany, Ian DeBoo, John Watson and the Trevor Tolhurst-Alan Ryder Corvette.

A late thrash might also see Tony Fleming make it to Motueka in his street-legal Ford Capri sporting a new alloy Rodeck engine.

Some sharp import cars will round out a field that gets into gear with qualifying around 11am, before moving into three rounds of dial-your-own handicap racing to sort out the trophy holder by 4pm.

• Tahuna Beach Holiday Park Speedway, Lansdowne Rd, Richmond. Good Friday from 7pm, Saturday from 5pm. Adults $15, children, members and seniors $5, family pass (2 adults and 3 children) $30.
  
  
• Keith Whiting Memorial Trophy, the Rock 94.6FM Dragway, Motueka Airport. Saturday 11am-4.30pm. Adults $15, children 12-16 $5, under-12s free.