World 240's

World 240's Superstocks, Paradise Valley Rotorua

This was a great meeting last year and usually one of the best weekends of the season, but for me this years version won't be featuring in my highlights. I made it to Friday's qualifying which was pretty good. Great to see Wayne Hemi back and most of the usual suspects got through to Saturdays finals but in a field as classy as this, many big names were going to have to take out the repercharge on Saturday to book their place, a mouth watering prospect. The stockcars provided good support for the BOP title won by 109r Jason Brown. As usual, a very promising lead in to the second night as long as the weather held... I did also have the ignominy of being ejected from a 'corporate area' that I didn't even realise I was standing in! Apparently I was in the NZ Welding corporate tent zone and got given a polite 'move along please' which gave me a chuckle. Troublemaker.

Qualifiers:
72p, 515r, 591p, 2nz, 77p, 85h, 37r, 16r, 4b, 135r, 89r, 52p, 7p, 58p, 96r, 23h, 38r, 52r along with 10p and the Overseas drivers who had practice runs during the course of the night.

Saturday rolled around and as most people now know, the weather didn't hold. I sat in the stands catching up with Pallmall (which was great) but the inevitable happened, the meeting was called and we were informed it was now a 'free' meeting on Sunday. How a meeting you have paid $25 for is deemed free is beyond me but as I had plans and would not be able to attend I headed to the main gates to see if there was a rainout pass or refund. By the time I made it to the gates (along with hundreds of others heading for the carpark derby) there were no passes being handed out and no chance I was hanging round getting even more soaked. Not good. As far as I am aware there is no chance of a refund (which to be fair it does state in the programme) and the club is not responsible for the weather but never-the-less I paid my money and got nought in return. There has to be a better way than this.

Just to make it EVEN worse the review on the Rotorua website and of course Macgors tells of a brilliant finals meeting on Sunday afternoon with plenty of biff and bash. For the record, the first major win of many no doubt for 52p Scott Joblin. 4b Joe Faram and 89r Dale Robertson took the other podium positions after a runoff. 87r Pat Westbury took the automatic qualification for next seasons 240's after winning the non-qualifiers 'Superstocks in Paradise' title. Lets hope for his sake - and ours - that it doesn't rain...

Meeting rating : 6/10 Friday night only