Despite the best efforts of a deranged Somalian woman hijacker causing chaos with our flights down, we arrived at 5pm, dumped our bags and headed straight for the track. It's been a while since we were in Palmy so I was getting a bit 'tense' until we actually got through the gates and with no chance of rain for once things were looking up. We had front row seats in the grandstand which is great for the teams races but can be like the front row at a movie when the fields are bigger for the consolation races and when the saloons raced on Saturday night we got sandblased big time, but it's a small price to pay when you get to see the 53p tank smashed into the wall RIGHT in front of you, awesome stuff!
I love the buzz in the pits pre-meeting and it was great to catch up with Wal86 who had some programmes for me and one of his DVD's which was much appreciated, these can be ordered from his website here. It's fairly hard to get photos of some cars and as a scale of popularity then the 9p silver bullet, 8p tank, 6p black waka and the 85h tank are streets ahead of anyone else. I also missed out getting any shots of the historic stockcars as the grandstand was evacuated for a fire alarm meaning everyone was out in the carpark standing around the old cars unfortunately.
I've always thought that the Friday night racing is better than the Saturday night because it's undiluted teams racing and again this year it didn't disappoint. The teams I thought would be strongest (Palmy, Waikato and Hawkes Bay) all made it through but the South Island teams didn't quite fire although the Nelson v Hawkes Bay race was one of the best of the night. Our Auckland team started off well but fell to a rampaging Waikato Wanderers in their second race. A full review of both nights racing can be read here and there are some great photos too. The hit on UK driver Stu Smith featured on the front page of the Manawatu Standard, a fantastic photo by Graeme Hughes.
There has been a few comments on Macgors Discussion board about the delay and switching of cars by Scott Miers prior to the final against Wanganui. Whether it's against the rules (I'm not sure that is was) the point is didn't everyone in the crowd want to see the Miers tank out there against Kerry Podjurski's tank? Unfortunately for Wanganui 14v Darryl Taylors car broke as he raced round to join his team which complicated things more but if I had a dollar for every time someone told me last years final was an anti-climax then whats a few minutes at the beginning of the race to ensure we have the best possible teams out there? I dont believe Taylors car was fixable anyway? The outcome was that the best team did in fact win and no matter what the Panthers do they will always be accused of some form of cheating which is unfair. In actual fact they are a great team, fully deserving the title and it will take a massive effort to dethrone them.
Another highlight was the Stratford Scrappers attempting to grid up for their first race and having only two cars mobile before somehow managing to get a full team out there, looking pretty much like dog tucker only to go on and spectacularly win the race! Proving the theory that if you can slow the other team down with good blocking then you don't need mega dollar cars to win. One for the underdogs.
Kerry Podjusky was easily the driver of the weekend, what an asset to the Warriors. He makes it look so easy disposing of cars with amazing timing and brutal force. Also worthy of mention was the 686s standard stock that helped in the win for Stratford, pity he didn't run in their second heat.
Hearing the guy behind us rip strips of the security guard who foolishly stood on the stairs in front of his row of spectators only to be told "I paid forty bucks to watch stockcars, not your fat arse!"
Anyway, I'm sure every facet of the meeting will be discussed at length on Macgors so I really don't need to say much more, except that I was happy to be back at the Teams Champs which still is the very best meeting on the speedway calendar in my humble opinion. Even if (as we amazingly still heard so many times) the draw is still rigged!
Meeting rating : 8.5/10
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