Farr claims grand final
Hectic night of racing brings down curtain on USC Qld season
‘‘ TO WIN ALL THREE CHAMPIONSHIPS IS THE BEST REWARD. ROBBIE FARR
SPEEDWAY: Robbie Farr is this season’s Queensland Ultimate Sprintcar champion after his grand final victory at Toowoomba’s Hi-Tec Oils Speedway.
Farr started his campaign by posting a track record of 10.550 seconds to qualify first ahead of an impressive Ben Hilder who stunned onlookers with a 10.801.
In a perfectly written script, the top three in the championship in Farr, Luke Oldfield and Toowoomba’s Peter Lack all won their respective heats in the first round, while Mitty Gee, Tony Wynne and New South Wales newcomer Damien Hart filed wins in their second outings.
With Farr and Oldfield starting off the front row for the 30-lap final, tension was high with Sammy Walsh paired on the second row with Ben Hilder while the home crowd were behind Lack who would start from row three alongside Michael Saller.
Farr looked good from the outset, but an incident for Brent Kratzmann in lap two ruined his opportunity to stay in the championship top five, while also spelling danger for Farr who only narrowly missed him on the next rotation.
Despite the track being so fast the race was overloaded with position-swapping battles, some of which ended in disaster, with the next stoppage due to a tangle with Gee and Saller in turn two on lap 13.
That ended both their nights despite a partial red being opened for Gee to replace a damage header, but sadly he just ran out of time before the restart.
Meanwhile at the front, Oldfield managed to pass Farr on two occasions while Sammy Walsh was poised to capitalise on any mistakes in third.
However the heartbreak of the night would come on lap 19 as Lack who was travelling in fourth tangled with Lockie McHugh who’d driven from 12th, ending Lack’s chance to maintain third in the overall championship.
Lapped traffic would create some great opportunities for Oldfield to pounce in the final third of the race, but never made it stick, while Walsh was never out of the picture, however Farr would defend his lead to bank the $7500 winners purse in addition to the $5000 USC Series win.
“To win all three championships in SA, Sydney and now here is the best reward for Nick (Speed) and Neil (Kelly) who’ve worked really hard to keep producing great race cars for me, so that’s a great result,” Farr said.
Oldfield finished second in the championship, while Jayden Peacock moved into third to relegate Lack to fourth.
The Queenland Ultimate Sprintcar Championship begins again on September 15 at Toowoomba which is the first sprintcar event on the southeast Queensland calendar.
Toowoomba Top Guns dominated the support divisions with Keith Blatch reigning over Aaron Kelly and Kurt Wilson in the lightning sprints who displayed some great racing in a very unique twin-feature format.
Dalby’s Terry Leerentveld held off Sam Gollschewsky and Klinton Hancey in a great night of racing from a big field of modlites.
Toowoomba’s final night of racing is this Saturday for the final IBRP.com Sportsman Event, with nine divisions on the card.