McIlveen Leads Stockman 1-2 in Second Race
from Mark Jones
Warren McIlveen has led Sam Zavaglia home in Race 2 as Stockman Superkarts come on strong at Morgan Park Raceway's round of the Rockpress Australian Superkart Championship.
Gary Pegoraro and Warren McIlveen traded the lead throughout the ten lap race but Pegoraro slowed on the sixth, dropping back to fourth position by the finish as the Anderson dropped pace.
Pegoraro finished fourth, behind Darren Hossack after an entertaining race which saw the front four karts, and the Anderson of Jason Smith, changing place regularly. Smith got into second position behind McIlveen when a piston failed halting the young Queenslander on the seventh lap. Hossack made the best of some consistent laps to hang onto the tail of McIlveen and Zavaglia to keep his championship hopes alive. Pegoraro now leads the series by just five points, 105 to McIlveen and Hossack, both on 100 points.
Ilya Harpas finished in fifth position in his Zip-BRC after spending much of the race fighting with Jason Laker's Stockman. Behind Laker, Kris Stebbing and Rod Prickett completed the top eight places.
Just behind the Harpas and Laker fight, Steven Murray had a nasty moment when Russell Jamieson's Stockman had an engine failure directly in front of him. Murray clipped Jamieson's suddenly slower kart and was launched towards the wall at Bridge Turn 3, missed and spun across the track. Murray restarted and claimed a points finish.
Ninth was Luke May in the leading 250 National class car, racing on his own after Martin Latta was unable to take the start with a broken throttle cable. Latta now has an uphill battle to regain the 250 National title, May leads the points 116 to 97. Second place for Brendan Luneman has tied up the points race for third with Frank Giglio, the only other 250 National finisher.
Steven Tamasi again won the 125cc class, claiming a seven second class win to narrow his title chase of Darren Dunn to just four points, 104 points to 100. Jeff Reed has a race long fight with Dunn and sits on 82 points in no man's land, no realthreat ahead or behind. Tim Philp finished fourth again ahead of Jeremy Shelton and Dalton Rowell drving the stock Honda powered Gold Kart.
Race 3 will take place at 1:30pm with the season finale to take place at the last race of the program at 4pm.
