Friday and Saturday night the 18th and 19th of March saw the running of the Australian Formula 500 Championship. At the official dinner on the Thursday night the driver’s preferences were split between wanting a slick or a tacky track. As it turned out we provided both.
The weather once again intervened on the Friday night with a couple of showers interrupting the three rounds of heats. Only due to a spectacular effort by our track curator Herbie were we able to continue racing.
As a result the track was super fast and tacky with very little incidents apart from a gentle tip over. Not all drivers were able to handle these conditions and a number of early favourites struggled to collect points.
Saturday saw a complete reversal of conditions with a warm day seeing the track turn from tacky to slick. Once again Herbie worked his magic and the track remained rut free all night. Everyone was desperate to do well and there were a number of stoppages for roll overs and collisions. The strength of the cars was highlighted with the majority able to continue and more importantly no one injured.
The final saw 10 Victorians, 8 Queenslanders and one driver each for NSW, Tasmania and Western Australia. James Aranyosi was the leading point scorer followed by Tyler Beasy and Tasmanian Marcus Kelly. Defending champ Dylan Wilshire started from the rear after failing to qualify on points for the final.
Once again the race started in a frantic fashion with a number of incidents taking out Kelly and Wilshire among a number of others.
Once the race settled down Liam Williams took charge and was never headed. Liam was followed home by Kaydon Iverson and Grant Stansfield.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all Formula 500 crews and family for putting on such a great show.
The V8 Super Sedan final was taken out by Wayne Dick after a race long battle with Mark Towers followed by Darren Anning. Dick and Towers ran side by side swapping the lead on a number of occasions. Unfortunately for Mark whose power steering did not work all night he ran out of arms in the final laps.
The Street Stocks stepped up to fill the gap after the Legend cars let us down. The running of the Greta Smith Memorial Classic lived up to its name. In a race that was both memorable and classic Brendan Wakeman and defending race holder Shane Carlson battled it out all the way. Brendan led for most of the race with Shane poking his nose through a number of times without making the pass. That was until the final corner when Shane set up the perfect outside move to cross the line with inches to spare. Ash Hall was able to watch all the action from his third place.