Vintage Treloar as he blitzes the first Sidecar Super Prix round

January 7, 2018 by Gillman Media

Darrin Treloar produced a vintage Treloar display at Gillman Speedway on Saturday night (6 January) when he and new passenger Jesse Headland blitzed the opposition to go unbeaten in the first round of the Nankang Tyres/Mitch Chassis Sidecar Super Prix.

The four round Super Prix Series has been hyped as being “like four Australian Championships” and the first round lived up to the hype with three of last season’s championship finalists reaching the final, but no one could challenge Treloar who won his five heat rides and the final convincingly.

Joining Treloar in the final were former Oceania Champion Mark Plaisted (13 points), current Australian Champion Trent Headland (12) and current World Cup Champion Warren Monson (9 points and winner of the last chance semi-final).

Although Plaisted was relegated to third in the final, with Headland finishing second, just being in the final was a great achievement after a spectacular crash in his fourth ride.

After three rides each, Plaisted was sitting alongside Treloar as the only unbeaten riders, but at the start of his fourth ride Plaisted cartwheeled spectacularly in turn two. Although it was an alarming looking crash, and he and passenger Ben Pitt required lengthy treatment by the medicos, they gutsily took their place in the rerun, and, despite the after-effects of the crash and riding their second bike, still finished second behind Dave Bottrell but ahead of former Australian Champion Mark Mitchell and in-form Kym Menadue/Eric Melton. They dropped their other point to Treloar in heat 18.

Overall second-placegetters Headland and Whetstone dropped their points to Plaisted, Treloar and Mitchell.

The point score was tight for a place in the semi-final with several riders missing out based on results in the last round of heats.

The fourth highest scorers were the consistent Damien Niesche and Mitchell Spear (10), then came Andrew Buchanan/Denny Cox, Monson and Andrew Summerhayes, Neale Hancock/Brock Gates, and Mick Headland/Brenton Kerr on 9, and Dave Bottrell/Chris Bottrell and Mark Mitchell/Dale Knights on 8.

Going into the last four heats Niesche was on 9, Bottrell, Monson and Mick Headland on 7, Buchanan and Hancock on 6, and Mitchell on 5. Both Bottrell and Mitchell had lost vital points in their third rides, with an infield exclusion for Bottrell, and a crash for Mitchell, while Buchanan had been off the pace of the leading riders in his early rides.

Hancock put himself in line for a semi-final berth with an all-the-way win over Mick Headland, Niesche and Menadue in heat 17. The win meant Hancock would finish ahead of Headland in any countback and that was the deciding factor with Hancock getting in and Headland missing out.

Bottrell, Monson and Buchanan all met in heat 19 and again the finishing order helped determine the qualifiers. Buchanan, after a lack lustre first three rides had won his fourth ride in fine style and again led heat 19 all the way to win easily and with two heat wins guaranteed a semi-final place. Bottrell was in second place for three laps and had he held that place he would have also been in the semi-final on heat wins, but he was passed by Monson on the last lap which meant Monson got in and Bottrell did not.

Mitchell won a close race with Trent Headland in heat 20, but it wasn’t enough, and like Bottrell he was a point shy of a semi-final berth.

The semi-final looked wide open, but although it was a close race between all four bikes, Monson led all the way for the win ahead of Niesche, Buchanan and Hancock.

Although Hancock finished last in the semi-final, he will be seeded to the remaining rounds for being the highest placed rider who came through from the pre-meeting qualifying races. So again the heat 17 result was again vital as Mick Headland was the other rider in contention for that seeded berth.

Kym Menadue was the best of the rest with 5 points, but there were some disappointing scores for a couple of riders. Shane Rudloff/Scott Morris (3 points) and more so Byren Gates/Michael O’Loughlin (2) would have been expecting to do much better, but for them there is the consolation of being able to write those scores off as only the best three rounds for each rider count in the overall series classification. On the flip side, points don’t always tell the full story as Dean Hobbs, although he only finished two races and scored 2 points, his times were three seconds quicker than his previous best this season which is quite an improvement.

Round 2 of the Super Prix will be held at Gillman on January 27, but the next Gillman meeting is the final of the Australian Solo Championship on Sunday night, 14 January.