World of Stocks 2009

King Flooring World of Stocks

Apparently this meeting was a scorcher last year so I made the trip down to Rotorua for Friday nights qualifying, quite possibly the coldest night of my speedway season so far. Unfortunately the action was a little muted and the crowd was well down on what I had expected. Apart from 11m Allen Dunn and 77r Ivan Lammas there were few drivers going for the wildcards by stirring up trouble, which meant that most of the racing was for the flag. 109r Jason Brown was the class act of the night easily making it through to the finals with some great driving. 77r Lammas picked up one wildcard and 557p Darrell Wallace got the other failing to qualify by mere meters with a missing wheel after two good finishes in his other heats. Surprise of the night for me was 5r Jeff Munro who narrowly missed making the top four who qualified.

Finals night stepped up a level with the inclusion of all the pre-meeting qualifiers and what a class field it was. Crowd numbers were also up but still nowhere near a sellout and a bit of a surprise considering the promotion that went into the event (on Macgors at least) and with a much stronger support programme than Friday too. I'll stick my neck out and say that I felt the Stocks in Paradise (non qualifiers) event probably had more action and most definitely had the best race (third heat) of the whole weekend but thats not saying the World of Stocks racing wasn't good. 78r Grant Savage showed in the first few laps that he was going to be a worth the $25 admission but fate intervened and he was involved in a hit on a stranded 113r Grendon Beazley that left both of them out for the night. 95r Dale Stewart, 48r Ivan King and 8m Scott Fredrickson finished 1, 2, 3 for the title and a comprehensive review can be found on the Rotorua website here.

Peter Rees as always was a major player in both the Stocks and Superstocks and even won a runoff at the end of the night for the BOP SuperStock title over Pat Westbury. The three South Island entrants in WOS, 24c Ivan McPhail, 18c Nick Sidaway and 28e Ralph Gillespie performed well against the cream of North Island stockcars but it was Gillespie who really stood out. I have to be honest and say most of the foreign entrants failed to fire. I really like the format of this meeting and given time I think it will be a must see, but looking around the pits on Friday there was a noticeable lack of entrants from some clubs that have strong numbers of cars. A third group of qualifiers on Friday would have been great. Hit of the weekend 98r Mark Costello on 77r or 68r Keith Spanhakes wall ride. Never say die award to 52v Francis Potaka who along with 29m Ryan Hunt felt the wrath of every car in the third heat of the non qualifiers and still managed to finish. The pre-meeting build up by the commentary team was first class, the printed programme was a winner and the speed with which the Friday meeting was run appreciated by the crowd I'm sure. Also I noticed that Aaron Iremonger driving the 71b of the late Peter Barry (the first wildcard entry that the Rotorua club had invited) qualified in the last position in the repercharge which gave him the grid 1 position in the opening heat, a completely unplanned but fitting tribute.

95r Dale Stewart 73pts
48r Ivan King 72pts
8m Scott Fredrickson 71pts
3nzp Peter Rees 70pts
1nzw Richard Gaskin 69pts

Meeting rating : 7/10