Mick Doble update.

The off season has arrived for most of the drivers and crews, but we have decided to continue racing what meetings we can.

Mick McInnis and I travelled to Karratha on the 27th and 28th of May to compete in the Nickol Bay Speedway Sprintcar muster. The car numbers were not as good as they had hoped but the racing was fast and very close in most races, some of the local limited cars are not as fast as we are used to but to talk to them at the end of the night and to see how much fun they are having it just goes to show you don’t need all the latest gear to enjoy this sport.

The Limiteds started off with 9 cars and dropped off slowly throughout the night. The first was Burke Holla with an engine problem that saw him pack up and head back to Carnarvon, one of the local drivers tagged the wall and another chased a fuel problem all night.

I am sorry I did not get all the names of the drivers or the positions they came but the results I can remember are below.

Aaron Ishiguchi was fast in the first heat leading all the way, I started off the rear and finished second.
The second heat I lead for the first 4 or 5 laps only to run over a piece of curb that had made its way onto the track and cracked the left rear wheel and blow the tyre, on the restart one of the local drivers had the left rear wheel come off and stopped the race again and with this the race was declared, this should have meant Aaron picked up his second win.

The third heat I picked up the win from Aaron.
On the second night Dusty got his fuel problem sorted out and was on the pace. The first heat went to e from Aaron and Dusty came in third.

The second heat had Dusty take off and lead the race from start to finish with me finishing in second. Aaron clipped the wall early on and ended on the infield but luckily did not have much damage.

The feature came around with its share of confusion, first the officials didn’t want to have an interval so this gave us no time to prepare our cars but after a discussion took place they agreed to give us 10 minutes to get ready. After this there was a mix up with the division that was to go out first and the 360’s had been told to get ready. Aaron and I continued to get their cars ready only to see the local limiteds being pushed out, when the pit marshals were questioned who was meant to be out they also had no idea but after contacting the stewards they announced it was the limiteds after all and we had 2 minutes to get on the track?? Unfortunately Aaron missed the time limit and had to start from the rear leaving Dusty to fill position 2 next to me for the start.

At the end I won from Dusty and Aaron.
I did not get the results in the other divisions but Mick McInnis was fast both nights and took a couple of wins and ended second in the feature race, and Shawn Bradford the only other car that travelled from down south was as always very fast getting around in the low 13 second range. Shawn took the win for the 410’s

It was a great week end of racing and we will be going back up again soon and it would be great to see some more cars make the journey up to support the Nickol Bay speedway. I would like to thank the committee and members who did everything they could to make it an enjoyable weekend and to see the smiles on the kids faces when they asked for autographs and posters etc makes it all worth the effort.

There is a race meeting in Carnarvon on the 4th and 5th of June with Steve and Annette Crabbe, Mick McInnis, Robbie Stephens, Andrew Pedlar and a few others heading up. Burke will be running a borrowed motor for the weekend as he hasn’t had time to fix his yet, there is also some very fast local drivers in Carnarvon so it should be another great weekend of limited Sprintcar racing. Unfortunately I will be working and will not be running again until the Far Western in Shark Bay.

Mick Doble