Plaisted wins, Headland excluded in Gillman Championship final - December 2013

December 29, 2013 by Gillman Media

Mark Plaisted/Brian Anthony won the Paintmaster SA Gillman Sidecar Championship last night after a dramatic final saw first-across-the-line Mick Headland/Paul Waters excluded.

The win was the third for Plaisted in the ten-year history of the championship, and was done in style.

Plaisted was unbeaten in the qualifying heats and was joined in the final by Warren Monson/Matt Morgan and Mick Headland/Paul Waters, who both scored 13 points in the heats, and Mark Mitchell/Tom Golding (10) who won the last chance semi-final.

Plaisted took the early lead in the final but was chased down by Headland who moved under Plaisted through turns one-two on the third lap, and went on to win the race, BUT Headland was excluded for both going infield, and barging, when he passed Plaisted, which handed the victory to Plaisted, ahead of Monson and Mitchell.

In the heats as well as being beaten by Plaisted, Headland was also beaten by Monson, while Monson dropped his other point to Mitchell.

While the four favourites ultimately made the final it wasn’t looking good for Mitchell early in the night. After twelve heats he had only scored 4 points, and had dropped some unexpected points to Arron Hartwig/Teagan Hartwig and Mick Cave/Gaz Williams in heat eleven, but he bounced back to win his final two heats and comfortably qualify for the semi-final as the joint top point scorer, along with Damien Niesche/Mitchell Spear, on 10 points.

Hartwig (9 points) and Mark Cossar/Daz Whetstone (8) were the other two qualifiers.

Cossar was the early leader in the semi-final but let Mitchell through too easily in turn three and Mitchell cleared away to win easily from Cossar, Hartwig and Niesche.

Just missing a place in the semi-final were Ron Parker/Nik Schwarzer, 8 points, beaten by Cossar on a count back, and Cave on 7.

Cossar, Parker and Cave were all unfortunate not to score more points.

Parker beat eventual semi-finalists Niesche and Hartwig in heat 7 but lost two points when he was excluded from second place behind Plaisted in heat 14 for going infield.

Cossar also dropped two points when he lost a chain while running second to Mitchell in the last heat.

His English compatriot Cave also suffered chain problems and lost a chain in both of his first two rides before finishing strongly with 7 points from his last three rides.

The remaining riders were all competitive without scoring a lot of points. Even the lowest scorers, Shane Rudloff/Damien Egan and Aaron Silvy/Matthew Barkla, who only scored 1 point each, were on the pace.

Above them Shane Evans/Kane Turner, Daniel Puddy/Luke Puddy and Brenten Dwyer/Adam Pfitzner all had their moments, while Tim Bichard/Dale Knights put in one of their best performances to date. It was a good night for the Bichard family as Tim’s father Keith (passenger Derick Thomas) also had probably his most successful night winning all three of his support class races after an engine failure hampered his chances of qualifying for the championship.

Unfortunately defending champions Jason Hardy and Geoff Langdon’s title defence never really got going after they started with a surprise first ride last place behind Cossar, Puddy and Dwyer. They showed glimpses of last season’s form later in the night but never looked like claiming a semi-final place.

Robert Branford had a clean sweep of the Solo events, winning all four of the races after some close racing with Robert Medson and Sam Martin, while further back the division two riders Seth Hickey, Jake Mitchell and Luke Mitchell had their own scraps going on with Hickey having slightly the better results.

Full heat results are on the Gillman Speedway website under the Results tab.