Race Report: Final Round, Wollongong Club Championship
from Mark Horsley
With rain all week and a light drizzle on the Sunday morning the Wollongong City Raceway was like a new track. Not particularly a fast surface, but one that would sort out the drivers from the drovers.
Clubman light was the first class out with local driver Mathew “Twisty “Southwell showing a clean set of heels to Trent Grubel & Daren Foley.
Yet again a strong turn out of Midgets provided the crowd with some very entertaining racing. HDT & Karting World’s Cody Gillis tussled with Josh Car and Nathan Rourke to take the win for the day.
With the Junior Clubman field continuing to grow, six drivers contested the day. Josh Seiffert took out all five races ahead of Ben Stellino and Nicholas Cooley.
Chad Horsley and John De Gori took out Rotax Light & Heavy respectively.
A somewhat larger than usual Senior National Light field was won by Paul Hodges with Solon Tsolakki & Stephen Zerafa pulling out the guns in the final and making the most of an incident between Cameron Moss & Stephanie Sandrone early in the race. Gary Cosis came first in Senior National Heavy.
Josh Seiffert’s trailer was starting to look like the trophy shop with Josh winning Junior National Heavy ahead of Mitch Leeson who seems to have found his form again and James Taylor finishing third.
Wollongong drivers dominated the top four spots in Clubman Heavy. Domenic Marciano led the field all day and finished first with Brad Moss & Michael Grantham 2nd & 3rd.
Rookie driver Jayden Ojeda cleaned up the races all day ahead of Christopher Sandrone & Glen Ormerod. Chris & Glen swapped finishing positions in the pre-final & final.
Junior National Light was always going to be a hotly contested race with hardly a whisker between the top five drivers. Jordan Zammit had his work cut out for him with Stefan Stankovic & James Duckworth both claiming victory in some of the heats. James Duckworth staked his claim for next year in this class finishing a commendable third after a DNF in the Prefinal put him back in the starting grid.
Tag Light could have been drawn out of hat with the lead pack chopping & changing positions more times than the number of laps. Matt Ferraro came out winning the final ahead of Domenic Marciano & Craig Farrell. Alex Taylor, Jeff Tresidder & Phil Warder battled out behind the light field in Tag Heavy with Alex, Jeff & Phil finishing 1st, 2nd & 3rd respectively.
Pasta Master Manuel Velasco had a convincing win in Tag Restricted Light, but the drive of the day went to Homebush Kart’s Daniel Smith who came from the rear of field to finish 2nd ahead of Mark Robin in 3rd.
Shane Roberts came 1st in Tag Restricted Heavy in front of newly returned to racing Noel Jago & Matt Donnelly.
Wollongong Kart Racing Club would like to thank all of its competitors for their participation this year and wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Safe New Year.
2011 will be bigger and better with a Junior Challenge being formulated by the club, details will be made available once finalised.
