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| Added: 03 Sep 2015 |
Category: 2015 Oval Racing |
| Denver Dominant in Series Final |
Denver Grattan won the Superstox NIOvalTV Series final at Aghadowey on Saturday 29th of August with a dominant lights to flag win at the 2015 World final venue.
It’s testimony to how busy a week it’s been with preparations for the NHR weekend and the Superstox weekend that it’s now Thursday and I’m only getting something penned for last Saturday’s Aghadowey meeting. The weeks just seem to pass quicker and quicker as the season goes on.
With NIovalTV the Superstox series sponsors in past seasons we’ve been able to stand back and look down on a full grid of Superstox with a certain amount of pride that you’d struggle to name anyone missing and the series we’ve backed was getting higher than regular meeting turnouts. This season however the car turnout for the final round seemed no more than a normal meeting, maybe even less. Maybe the series’ aren’t just a popular with the drivers as they once were as it was also noticeable with the 2 Litres the previous week that the TRM series round had something like seven cars on the grid for it’s final. My role within oval racing has evolved in the past fifteen years but my ethos of trying to add value to the sport remains, if your contribution adds value then it’s worth doing, when it stops adding value then I’ll stop doing whatever that thing is. Putting sponsorship up to “dangle the carrot” if you like, to bring more cars out on track for those meetings certainly adds value if they come out, but when the series is producing the same turnouts of cars as a normal meeting then it raises questions over what the value of the investment adds for fans. Five Hoosier tyres is quite a big investment for our wee company and but it’s worth it when you see a big grid of cars and everyone comes away talking about the class, previous blogs on NIOvalTV series meetings will probably testify to that.
Still with the the theme of classes we sponsor the 1300s seem to be becoming the most hit and miss class in the sport, known to produce grids of 16-18 cars but a few times this season they’ve produced grids of 5-6 DMC cars at DMC tracks, that really takes the class back to where it was last season if you only see them at DMC tracks.
Despite the low turnout of 1300s their opening race was possibly the race of the night with Curtis Greer, Ivan Elliott and Chris Hamill had a great three way battle for most of the race with Greer taking the win. Hamill went on to take heat two and Greer the final.
In the Stock Rods Stevie McNiece won the opening heat, I attempted to go and get a burger (seen the queue and changed my mind) during the second heat and Gary Butler was awarded the final after being second across the line to Micky McFall who was docked for contact, I was experiencing a camera problem and to be honest was paying more attention to it.
The three Ninja Kart races produced three different winners with the spoils in the heats going to Jack Hazlett and Stewart Hanna before Jay Clyde won the final. It was clear to see a few drivers who’d been to Scotland had come on a bit since the last local meeting and it’s great to see their talents develop.
Chris McArdle won both of the heats in the Superstox before Denver Grattan won the NIOvalTV series final with Gary Grattan second and Mark Murphy third.
I’m not a fan of gimmicky things, anyone who’d read my ramblings as far back as the days of forums will know that and my views haven’t changed, I accept they bring in a crowd and we hope that crowd likes what they seen of the racing and comes back again. I found it quite alarming therefore that quite a large proportion of the crowd that had presumably come for the double decker bangers went home after their second race. I don’t see much hope in getting them to come back to watch stockcar racing when they didn’t see enough in it to get them to stay for the remainder of the meeting which included a third Double Decker race.
It was the first time I’d seen Double Decker bangers though and to be honest they, like the 1300s, were entertaining for all there was of them, it could just do with more of them. Stevo and Tom Waller’s approach of waiting on cars spiced them up a bit. I’d imagine since they brought in a bit of a crowd that they’ll be on next years fixture list too, so hopefully a few more people consider coming out in them.
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