Rick Stephens/Nick O’Brien unbeaten in Gillman Division 2 Sidecar Championship - February 2017

February 5, 2017 by Gillman Media

Broken Hill’s Rick Stephens, and Mildura passenger Nick O’Brien, maintained their good 2016/17 form with an unbeaten run in last night’s Gillman Speedway Division 2 Sidecar Championship.

Stephens and O’Brien started the season with an unbeaten run in the group 2 races at the opening meeting of the season. They stepped up to group 1 for their next appearance but blew a motor in their first ride, before going unbeaten again in the Nankang Tyres South Australian Championship Qualifying meeting (and scoring 5 points in the championship heats).

If there was any pressure on to see if they could carry that form into the Division 2 Championship it didn’t show as they were unchallenged all night.

Three pairs dominated the heat racing, Stephens/O’Brien, Kym Menadue/Eric Melton and Shane Rudloff/Scott Morris, and they finished in that order in the final.

As fate would have it the three were drawn together in heat 7 and the result on that occasional was Stephens-Rudloff-Menadue.

They were the only points Menadue dropped, but Rudloff dropped a further point to Mildura’s Nathan Cock/Jack Wilson in an upset result in heat 12.

Cock, making his first appearance at Gillman, started slowly with two pointless rides, and then finished second to Dean Hobbs/Justin Richards in heat nine, before his upset win over Rudloff, Hobbs and Paul Donnelly/Jake Roberts in the most exciting of the heat races.

Cock then won the qualifying final after a wheel-to-wheel race with Donnelly and Brian Silvy/Josh Knott to advance to the semi-final where he came up one short on getting through to the final.

The semi-final brought together Tim Bichard/Brenton Marsh, Aaron Silvy/Adam Pascoe, Dean Hobbs/Justin Richards and Cock/O’Brien.

Prior to the meeting Bichard, Silvy and Hobbs would have all fancied their chances of a berth in the final but all would have ultimately gone home disappointed. Bichard was the first to go out, as he did not even make it to the tapes for the race, then Hobbs ran off the track while running third behind Silvy and Cock, leaving Silvy to win the race and qualify for the final, but he also ended the night disappointed as he suffered a flat battery and was excluded from the final for exceeding the two-minute time allowance.

In the three rider final, Stephens led all the way to win ahead of Menadue and Rudloff.

In the supporting 500cc Solo races, the results were evenly spread amongst Dakota Ballantyne, Arlo Bugeja and Brayden McGuinness. Bugeja had two wins, and Ballantyne and McGuinness one each in the scratch races, before Ballantyne, with a generous 10 metre start on McGuinness, won both the handicap races with McGuinness second, and Seth Hickey third.

In the 250cc Solos, Connor Bailey got the better of Fraser Bowes in three of their four races, albeit only by a few bike lengths in a couple of them.

Top photo: Rick Stephens/Nick O’Brien (red) and semi-finalists Dean Hobbs/Justin Richards (green) and Tim Bichard/Brenton Marsh (white) in heat one of the Gillman Speedway Division 2 Sidecar Championship. Photo by Judy Mackay.