Mark Mitchell and Justin Plaisted in top form at Gillman Speedway - March 2017

March 19, 2017 by Gillman Media

Adelaide’s two former Australian Champions, Mark Mitchell and Justin Plaisted, were in fine form at Gillman Speedway last night, just weeks before the season’s major events, the World Cup, Oceania Championship and Australian Championship.

Competing in the Trans-Tasman Sidecar Spectacular, Mitchell, with new passenger Sam Harrison who was making his first appearance this season, clean sheeted in the heats, including a spectacular win, befitting the meeting’s title, over Plaisted in heat eight, and the fastest time of the night.

Plaisted only dropped that one point to Mitchell until his last ride when a bingle sent him infield, but 11 points was still enough for direct entry into the final, and in the final he was out of the start and gone as soon as the tapes went up.

Second place went to Mitchell, third to Kiwis Jamie Moohan/Bayley Ogilvie, and fourth to Arron Hartwig/Teagan Hartwig.

Hartwig was the second highest point scorer with 13 points, beaten by Mitchell and Rudloff in heat 10, but completely missed the start in the final and was never in contention for a place.

Moohan, fellow Kiwis James Douglas/Harley Biddle and Adelaide’s Shane Rudloff/Scott Morris all scored 10 points to qualify for the semi-final along with another Adelaide pair Kym Menadue/Eric Melton who scored 9.

After the long trip from Hikutaia (about 100km from Auckland), Moohan’s night started on a disappointing note when he touched the tapes in his first, but he recovered to score his 10 points from his remaining four rides – only beaten by Mitchell and Hartwig – and then led all the way in the semi-final, and was in the mix for second with Mitchell in the early laps of the final.

Rudloff produced his most impressive night’s racing of the season but second place in the semi-final meant six second places on the night for him.

Douglas had a couple of good wins in his ten points, and was side by side with Rudloff at the finish of the semi-final, and a semi-final berth was a good result for Menadue, qualifying ahead of Daniel Puddy/Luke Puddy, Tim Bichard/Justin Richards (8 points) and Dean Hobbs (6). All three had some good wins – Bichard beating Rudloff, then Puddy beating Bichard, and Hobbs also beating Bichard, but they all lost some points they might not have expected to which was the difference between getting into the semi or not.

The third Kiwi pair of Aiden Thwaites/Shane Twiss had a particularly disappointing night. As semi-finalists in last season’s World Cup they were expected to challenge for a semi-final berth last night but were well off the pace until their last race when they finally got going and were a close second to Douglas.

In the support events Robert Medson was unbeaten in the 500cc Solo events, Connor Bailey and Fraser Bowes had their usual close races in the 250cc events, and Patrick Bowes won the 125cc final ahead of Jack Sadler who was the hard luck story in the final. He had the race won until a clash between Bowes and Teagan Pedler caused a restart which Bowes led from start to finish.

Top photo: Justin Plaisted/Simon Cohrs. Below: Justin Plaisted/Simon Cohrs (white) leading Mark Mitchell/Sam Harrison (red) and Jamie Moohan/Bayley Ogilvie (yellow) in the final of the Trans-Tasman Sidecar Spectacular. Both photos by Judy Mackay.