Mark House has won the Bob Adams Memorial meeting at Northam Motorsports, ahead of Andrew Priolo and Jason Pryde.

‘Interesting’ was scribed as the weather prediction within the pre-race press-release, and it was hot, humid and overcast conditions that greeted competitors making the journey east to Northam for the running of the Bob Adams Memorial.

Whilst the buggies did their thing on the off-road track, and the burn-out cars honed their skills in the middle of the speedway, the track crew kept the water on the speedway circuit and created an oh-so heavy surface that was to be a pit-crew’s worst nightmare, whilst raising a just a sly smile on the faces of the tear-off manufacturers. Racing commenced after a hot-lap session, with proceedings officially beginning at 7pm.

Heavy, wet and just ‘awesome to drive-on’ were track conditions through the heats. The courageous ran about 3/4 track high, the curb-line was a swamp, so a groove started to emerge just below mid track, and this widened as the night progressed.

Clean-air was almost gilded. Drivers would position to pass, and the lights would turn off as tear-offs couldn’t be grabbed fast enough to get the moves completed. It was dirty-fast racing, and the track surface was like butter; the clay / sand blend just caking cars top-to-tail. Put the scales away! No one would be judged to have run under-weight.

Heats rolled out at a frantic pace, and heat wins were shared between Jason Pryde, Travis Bell with a great win, Andrew Priolo, and Matt Brown. Brendan Condren returned to racing with a heat win and the high-line hero Brock Nanovich picked up a great win for the rookie driver.

14 cars lined-up for the feature, with Andrew Priolo on pole, another fantastic achievement for the first-year driver. Fresh from Oval Express glory; Matt Brown started out of two. Mark House and Brock Nanovich filled the second-row.

Brown’s feature was unfortunately doomed from the beginning, with a flat left rear evident during rolling laps on the #4.

On the green, Brown squeezed Priolo low, but it was Nanovich with a barn-storming move on the high-line, around everyone and disappearing into the distance. Brown pulled out by lap two, with House working the curb line through the grease passing Priolo, and out after Nanovich.

With Nanovich running the high-line, House dive-bombed the bottom to take the lead – almost... Onto the main straight and Nanovich just caught the tail of House, spearing him through the slop and towards the infield. With the infield start line marshal getting a quote on life-insurance, House saved the car and made it through turn one just ahead of Pryde; who had moved up two places from starting 6th. Back in the field it was Sinagra who was getting going, running the bottom and moving forward from 9th.

House put the eye-balls back in and chased down Priolo and with an aluminium kiss passed for second, before chasing down Nanovich and retaking the lead. Nanovich ran into dramas with left-front suspension failure and dropped back, whilst Pryde and Sinagra worked the bottom and moved forward. With five to go contact between Condren and Aaron Higgins left the #69 of Condren stranded just inside the curb of turn two, and whilst the field hoped for a yellow, a dog-tired House prayed for the white and finally took the chequers ahead of Priolo, Pryde and Sinagra. The theatre of the feature proved a fitting memorial for Bob Adams.

House took his first win since 2009 and pocketed the $1000 first prize. Despite an exhausting night for crews and drivers, all teams look forward to returning to Northam for round 7 of the West Coast Series in March.

The West Coast Series in the meantime picks up with the Esperance and Kalgoorlie double-header over Australia Day weekend.