| |
| Added: 18 Jun 2012 |
Category: 2012 Oval Racing |
| 2012 - #20 – Tullyroan Oval – 16/6/12 |
The first day of the first National Banger two day meeting in Northern Ireland, which initially was going to be England V Ireland, that fell through and it was then going to be North V South, that too didn’t work and so it was settled as an Irish Open Championship and the first sight of racing at Tullyroan in wet conditions. Before the meeting had even started Jay Jay McConaghie had been upside down in his Robin and Glenn McDowell had been into the wall on the back straight.
Saturday seen the Bangers in their 2 Litre form with cars numbers in the high twenties. English visitor Kilford came out in top of the bangers as English drivers filled the top three places in the Irish Open itself. Steven Reynolds took the all comers race and it was him and Kilford who ended up the last two running in what seemed like a lengthy DD, Reynolds eventually coming out the victor.
The Stock Rods may their first trip to Tullyroan and put on some fantastic and clean racing throughout the evening, all three races featured three and sometimes four abreast racing and went from lights to flag with no issues. Thomas Morrison took the opening heat and the final, while heat two went to Tipperary visitor Colm O’Sullivan.
The 2 Litre Hot rods had an action packed evening, which for most of the night looked to be playing into the hands of the star graders, Derek Martin took the opening heat before Wayne Woolsey took heat two after Bobbie Johnston had almost done enough to keep the former two times world champion behind him. Heat two was action and incident packed and had a number of race leaders or cars that looked like they’d go through to win only end up falling foul of incidents.
The 2 Litre final went to Pat Casey who drove a controlled race from the front to build up a comfortable gap ahead of the star men as they came through the field. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as big a grin on a driver climbing out of a race car after they’d won a race!
Graham Kingham won all three races in the Robins, which featured some highs and lows, the final had possibly the closest finish of the night, while heat two only had 4 cars, and was pretty poor viewing. On the plus side the bangers had moved the infield tyres and it did open up a gap to photo the Robin final from the infield.
Approx Car Turnout: 84 cars (8 Robins, 27 National Bangers, 23 2.0 Hot Rods, 26 Stock Rods)
On the topic of highs and lows, a few hours after I was home from Tullyroan I learnt of the death of Saloon Stock Car driver Steve Newman, who lost his life while racing at Mildenhall on Saturday night. While everyone who races, flags, photos or goes through the gate in any manner is aware of the dangers of what they are doing, we all still expect to be going home at the end of the meeting and doing it all over again the following week. It’s another dark day for our sport, and my thoughts go out to Steve’s family, friends, those involved at the track and those present. RIP #311
|
.JPG)
|
.JPG)
|
.JPG)
|
.JPG)
|
.JPG)
|
.JPG)
|
.JPG)
|
.JPG)
|
.JPG)
|
.JPG)
|
.JPG)
|
.JPG)
|
.JPG)
|
.JPG)
|
.JPG)
RIP #311 |
| More pics on TullyroanOval.com |
|
|
|
  |
|
|
|
