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| Added: 28 Jul 2015 |
Category: 2015 Oval Racing |
| Jackson's Euro at Tullyroan |
Day two of the DMC Summer Speedweekend and the action moved along to Tullyroan with the Lightning Rods European the star attraction. It turns out “Summer” may not have booked in for this fixture and instead we got default Northern Ireland weather of wet, windy, cold and miserable.
The Lightning rods again started the meeting and ran a two from three format. The opening heat went to David Hearst who won it from the front, it was at the only point in the day where the track had started wet and was drying out. Heat two went to Scott Cochrane and the third heat was a win for Nigel Jackson. When the points from the heats were all totalled up it was Richard Stewart who’d taken pole with Lee Skoyles alongside with Nigel Jackson and Feargal McNally on the second row. From the off Stewart was into the lead and it wasn’t long before Jackson was into second and the pair broke away. Stewart looked to have a comfortable enough lead and held a steady gap ahead of Jackson who was perhaps just playing the waiting game. As the race approached the closing stages Jackson closed the gap, made his move and took the lead. Stewart attempted to come back at him late on but Jackson held on to take the win with Stewart second and Jordan Rochford third.
The 2 Litres raced for their Irish Masters title and qualified through two all in heats rather than the ⅔ format from the night before. All in I think produced better racing and given the conditions meant one less race which I welcomed given the conditions.
Dan Smith took the opening heat win with Shane Murray taking the second heat. Mark Madill had, Joel Richardson and Adam Hylands had also had strong heat results.
The final grid seen Madill on pole with Murray alongside, Murray got away in the early stages and Madill lost ground and started to slip down the order before pulling off. Hylands and Richardson came through to second and third before Hylands ended up in the turn three wall. Richardson caught Murray late on and got up alongside him and edged his nose into the lead but on the outside with a few laps to go, but they caught backmarking Philip Beatty at just the wrong time for Richardson and Murray got the advantage and went on to take the win with Richardson second and Damon Wellman third.
As happens in contact formulae the 1300s and ProStocks both suffered with their numbers on the Sunday. The 1300 heats were won by Callum Barclay and Adam O’Dell before O’Dell led home Barclay in the final, which started with just nine of the twenty five/ twenty six cars that had raced over the weekend.
The ProStocks I think they ended up with thirteen or fourteen cars in their final which was won by Dan Shannon.
The Superstox replaced the Ninja Karts and included the last minute addition of David Frame who never really got the car going. Gary Chambers and Adrian McKinstry shared the heat wins before Denver Grattan won the final.
For me the Speedweekend wasn’t a patch on previous ones, I dislike the split venues and think it’s a throwback from the pre “Speedweekend”/ pre Nuttscorner Oval era, going back to the days when a weekend of racing would be split across Ballymena and Portadown, it just doesn’t feel like a Speedweekend. The link from Saturday to Sunday is a big loss I think too, you don’t come away having seen half the story, eager to see how the other half ends, you’ve seen a full story and the next day there’ll be another one, contact classes can get away with it because you have the who owes who sub plot, but rod classes need the meetings to link for me. There is the amount of Speedweekends too, there is now 3 DMC speedweekends, not including the several weekends with two back to back meeting at one venue then the other (like the banger weekend or the upcoming one at the start of August), it’s made the first one at least seem a bit diluted. The weather no doubt dropped the crowd well down on Sunday which killed any atmosphere. The clashing Cowdie meeting no doubt hurt the ProStock numbers, but then they have another weekend later in the year so it is perhaps a bit much to ask a budget class to travel twice and Tipperary I think ran on Sunday too and there wasn’t too many Irish folk about all weekend that I noticed anyway, I’m sure the exchange rate would be putting them off coming just as much.
All that said, you can’t get them all right, they aren’t all going to be belters and I'm sure the rain on Sunday played a bigger part than anything else in my thoughts on it. Let’s hope the weather is kinder for the next one….. in the same way I hoped last week it would be nice this week!
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