A man for all races
Current Sportsman racer, ex-Mini Stocks champ Rob Goulding endures in enduro
Give Rob Goulding a dirt track, a green flag and four wheels – OK, five if you include the steering wheel — and he’s rarin’ to go.
And on Sunday the Port Colborne racer went the distance on his hometown track, all the way to victory lane.
Driving the beater that couldn’t be beat, Goulding took over the lead with 22 circuits remaining in a 75-lap enduro at New Humberstone Speedway, and he stayed there the rest of the way for the win in the crumpledfender-to-crumpled-fender war of attrition.
Goulding knows his way around tracks in Niagara, no matter what he happens to be driving.
This year Goulding finished 13th in the points standings in his first season racing full-time in the Sportsman class at Merrittville Speedway. Two years ago, he won the points championship in Humberstone’s Mini Stocks class as well as the 4-cylinder division at Merrittville.
A packed grandstand watched nearly 275 cars in action Sunday afternoon at Humberstone’s annual Eve of Destruction season finale.
Ridgeville’s Todd Gordon, a Saturday night regular in Merrittville’s premier class, 358 Modified, won a hard-fought, 12-lap flagpole race, and teamed with Port Robinson’s Billy Bleich Jr., normally a Hoosier Stocks hotshoe, to win the side-by-side race.
Sarah Rutherford earned a flag-to-flag victory in the 10lap ladies race, Karl Sault set the pace in the enduro cross and Todd Haughton won the trailer race after scoring first on the last completed lap.
Joel Duelfeld and Rick Savage each took a checkered flag in a demolition derby.
In addition to beaters sustaining more of a beating in the enduro, some for the last time, the Eve of Destruction lived up to its name with the second annual Crush Off. Darren Peters, from Peters Excavating, and Dave Walters, from Walters Excavating, crushed, among other items, three cars, a bus as well as a boat.
After the scrap metal settled into an impressive pile, Walters was declared the winner after, no doubt, crushing the competition.
All but two of Humberstone’s five regular racing divisions had new points champions this season: Chad Chevalier, Port Colborne, Sportsman; Chad Homan, Macedon, N.Y., Late Models; and Cole Hardy, Welland, Mini Stocks.
Hagersville’s Dave Bailey raced to his second track title in Hoosier Stocks, and St. Catharines’ Dylan Llord defended his Humberstone championship in Pro 4 Trucks.
The Port Colborne speedway’s annual Night of Champions awards banquet is set for Saturday, Nov. 11, at Americana Resort in Niagara Falls.