Pickens starts in style

Leading Kiwi speedway star Michael Pickens ushered in the new season with a superb performance on the opening night of the Springs Speedway season on Friday night.

In front of the largest opening night crowd in recent memory, Pickens won the sprint car feature and was third in the midget feature, where Hayden Williams claimed a breakthrough win, sneaking past Pickens late in the race.

After jumping out to a comfortable lead in the sprint car feature, a late safety looked set to give second-placed Dean Brindall and third-placed Jamie Larsen a chance of jumping Pickens at the restart. But time delays and the need to start the fireworks display at 10.30pm meant the race was called a handful of laps short and ensured Pickens was crowned Auckland champion.

“It went to plan for sure,” Pickens said. “The guys gave me a hell of a car — the thing was on rails. It was a pretty tricky track and you have to have a car right for that and fortunately ours was.”

Pickens was overwhelming favourite for the midget feature. He jumped straight to the lead of the race and a win seemed a foregone conclusion but late in the race, as lapped traffic became a factor, Pickens was a touch cautious and second-placed Williams made an aggressive but clean move for the lead. Pickens threw everything into a last-ditch attempt and left himself vulnerable to a dive on the line by Brock Maskovich, who grabbed second.

“You can blame everything else, but at the end of the day, we just got stuck behind some lapped traffic and it was super hard to pass — especially at [turns] three and four,” Pickens said. “Hayden did a good job and saw a gap and went for it.”

Kenny Roberts won the F2 midget feature race while Scott Baker triumphed in the TQ feature.

The next meeting is the Summer Bash — North Island Midget title and North Island Sprintcar title — on November 30.