NEWS RELEASE 1 November 2008

NO RAIN ON MOSEN’S PARADE

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 2nd 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 4th 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 6th 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.