Another championship win for Darrin Treloar and Blake Cox - March 2017

March 5, 2017 by Gillman Media

After 47 races, and against an Australian Championship class line-up, Darrin Treloar/Blake Cox added another championship to their resume with victory in the Gillman Sidecar Championship in Adelaide last night.

The early heats of the championship were a Treloar masterclass as he was at his very best, but in the end he needed a modicum of luck, in the form of a race restart, to win the final.

Treloar’s first ride was heat three, against a quality line-up of Mark Mitchell/Tony Carter, Trent Headland/Daz Whetstone and Andrew Buchanan/Denny Cox but it was no contest as Treloar raced away for a big win. Treloar rode virtually the perfect race, not putting a wheel wrong, and not surprising broke the track record jointly held by Mitchell and Warren Monson, reducing the time from 57.52 to 57.30 seconds.

He was beaten by Justin Plaisted/Simon Cohrs (both former passengers for Treloar) in his next ride but there was a mitigating circumstance as he almost lost passenger Blake Cox early in the race. With Plaisted leading, Treloar got into trouble in turn four on the opening lap and Cox was thrown high into the air. Amazingly, however, he managed to keep hold onto Treloar and get himself back onto the back of the bike. Treloar then gave chase to Plaisted and only came up short by half-a-bike length which earned raucous applause from the large crowd.

In his third ride he led home Damien Niesche/Mitchell Spear, who had beaten Treloar twice in Treloar’s previous visit, by 60 metres, and at this stage a Treloar victory looked a foregone conclusion.

In his fourth ride he came up against another in-form pair in North Queensland’s Tyler Moon/Adam Lovell. At the time Moon had clean sheeted with eight wins from eight rides! With such a high class line-up, and with Moon making his first appearance at the track as a rider, he was required to go through the qualifying heats, and he made mincemeat of them winning all five rides with ease. He then continued that form in the championship heats, winning his first three heats, taking the scalps of Mark Mitchell, Mark Plaisted, Shane Hudson, Dave Bottrell and Trent Headland, but his first defeat of the day looked on the card in heat fifteen with Treloar in such good form, and there was no surprise result. Although Moon was the early leader, Treloar powered around him through turn four and pulled away to win easily.

There were surprise results in the last bracket of heats however, for both Treloar and Moon.

Treloar was out in heat 17 and to everyone’s surprise he found himself in last place behind Dave Bottrell/Chris Bottrell, Hamish Golding/Bayley Ogilvie and Mark Plaisted/Ben Pitt early in the race, and as the race progressed he was making no impression on the other three. Bottrell was pulling further and further away in front, eventually winning by 60 metres, with Treloar still in last place and the best he could do was a last corner pass on Plaisted for third place, although Plaisted was excluded anyway for a clash with Treloar earlier in the race.

So despite Treloar’s early dominance there was every likelihood that Moon would finish the heats as the highest point scorer, but amazingly he fared no better than Treloar, finishing third behind Niesche and Buchanan in heat 19.

That left Treloar and Moon as equal top scorers on 12 points. The third direct qualifier for the final should have been the Kiwi Buchanan also on 12 points but he’d retired with a lap to go in his third ride, depriving him of a guaranteed 2 points and leaving him ultimately in a three way tie for third place with Mark Mitchell and Justin Plaisted on 10 points. Justice prevailed, however, when he did get the third place in the final on countback, which came down to who beat who when Buchanan and Plaisted met in heat 13.

That relegated Plaisted and Mitchell to the last chance semi-final, where they were joined by Headland and Niesche, both on 9 points.

The next best was Bottrell on 8. He had started the meeting poorly with just two points from his first three rides, but then got his set-up right for two scorching wins over Mitchell, Niesche, Golding, Treloar and Mark Plaisted.

Three-time champion Mark Plaisted had a similar night , scoring two good wins in his first thee rides, but could only manage 1 point from his other three rides to finish on 7. Arron Hartwig/Teagan Hartwig also finished on 7, with Byren Gates/Jesse Headland and Neale Hancock/Brendan Johnson next on 6 each. Warren Monson/Andrew Summerhayes started the meeting well with a win just 0.41 seconds outside his own track record at the time, but was out for the rest of the meeting with engine trouble, while Shane Hudson/Eli Wright also had bike trouble and failed to score from three rides before pulling out of the meeting.

So to the semi-final and the all South Australian line-up was Mitchell in red, Justin Plaisted blue, Headland white and Niesche yellow. So often the semi-final is the race of the night, but not on this occasion as the super-determined Plaisted led all the way to win from Mitchell, Headland and Niesche.

The final was a much more cosmopolitan mix with Plaisted the only home rider (in yellow) against Sydney’s Treloar (red), Townsville’s Moon (blue) and Kiwi Buchanan (white).

Despite his last heat glitch, Treloar was still the favourite to win, but it looked very unlikely when Plaisted and Moon jumped into the early lead. For the first lap and a bit they were side by side but as they came out of turn two on the second lap they made slight contact and Moon’s sidecar wheel was lifted off the ground and he spun around. This truly came under the definition of “a racing incident” and with no one really to blame referee Phil Turnbull allowed all four bikes back in the rerun.

Well, as everyone knows, when Treloar’s not in first place you don’t give him a second chance, and predictably, although Plaisted led for the first lap, Treloar cleared out to win the rerun by one of the biggest margins of the night with Plaisted second, Moon third and Buchanan fourth.

Earlier in the day there had been 27 qualifying races to find four qualifiers and they were Moon, unbeaten on 15, Clint Mayes/Sean Coleby 13, Neale Hancock/Brendan Johnson 12 and Hamish Golding/Bayley Ogilvie 10. Just missing out were Kym Menadue/Eric Melton on 10, and Dean Hobbs/Justin Richards on 9, and both would have been very disappointed as they gave away qualifying places in their last rides. Menadue held a comfortable second throughout heat 19 which would have seen him finish on 11 points, only to be passed by Shane Rudloff/Scott Morris right on the line, which left Golding and Menadue tied on 10 points and the countback was decided by that race which Golding was also in and had won.

Hobbs was out in the last heat against a strong line-up of Moon, Hancock and Mark Radford/Blake Halls (who although only on 6 points had ridden better than ever before at Gillman) but looked good in second place behind Moon until a very slight mistake at the end of lap two let Hancock get through. Third place still would have got him through on a countback, but a lap later Radford relegated him to last place on no score.

Clint Mayes/Sean Coleby would have won the Ironmen award for the day if there had been one, taking a massive fourteen rides (nine of them in 33 degree heat), fifteen if you include a pre-meeting practice just before their first qualifying heat.

Menadue’s passenger Eric Melton would have also been in the running for the award for his effort to stay on the bike in their opening ride. Menadue was marginally in front when Melton fell and was being dragged along the track just hanging on by one hand. It was alarming to see as he was almost certain to be hit by the closely following bikes if he lost his grip, but somehow he not only held on but after half a lap managed to raise one leg enough to get back on the bike and they held on to win the race. Amazing stuff and they got the biggest round of applause for the day.

The next Gillman meeting is on March 18 and early nominations include former Australian Champion Mark Drew, current New Zealand Champion James Douglas and New Zealand #3 Jamie Moohan.