FISKE DOES IT AGAIN AT FOXHALL

NATIONAL HOT RODS

Organiser: Spedeworth When: March 28 Where: Foxhall International Raceway, Ipswich Starters: 23

Following on from his storming final victory at Hednesford a fortnight earlier, Danny Fiske played his Joker at Ipswich and used the four new tyres that went with it to repeat the exercise on Bank Holiday Monday.

In contrast to much of the country, Foxhall Heath was blessed with sunshine and a racing surface free from any form of rain.

Aaron Dew took the lead at the start of the first race but didn’t have much time to enjoy it as NHR debutant Lee Morgan shed a rear wheel from his Mercedes, bringing on a mandatory caution.

The restart pitched Dew into a duel for the lead with Shaun Taylor but it wasn’t long before the leader began to pull away, Taylor’s struggle to keep up having also carried him well clear of third man Danny Hunn.

But the man to watch in the latter half of the race was Fiske. After catching a lurid slide at the exit from turn four while trying to wrest fifth spot away from Steve Dudman, ‘The Wildman’ Fiske was on an entertaining charge for the rest of the way. He didn’t quite manage to catch Taylor but the second man was no doubt suitably grateful there weren’t any more laps left.

Heat two also featured an early stoppage when Colin Smith went spinning and the steward declared an unsatisfactory start.

When they got going for real, it was Taylor who set the pace out front, with Dew and Hunn the ones playing catch up this time. These three, and fourth man Mikey Godfrey, were soon fairly well clear of a battling 12-car pack headed up by Ivan Grayson.

With the passing of half distance, Dew managed to settle on Taylor’s shoulder before seizing his chance to dart past six laps from home.

An incident near the finish that left German visitor Winnie Holtmanns and Jack Blood locked together in the wall at turn one later led to Blood’s disqualification.

Not surprisingly, Dew had annexed pole for the final, with Taylor outside him and Hunn and Fiske sharing row two. That grid suggested Fiske ought to be doing the winning but National Hot Rod racing is rarely that simple…

He was, however, helped along by Dew and Taylor battling side-by-side all through the opening lap before they both got into turn three way too deep. Fiske cheerfully accepted the offered opening and once in front immediately commenced pulling away.

But for the third time of the day, this race too was also brought up short by yellow flags for the spun cars of points leader Shane Bland and Billy Wood, who’d gone around in unison at turn four. This naturally closed the field right up and put Smith in position to swiftly relegate Dave York and Dew to begin a pursuit of the leader.

Fiske proved able to maintain his advantage over Smith, though, and in the end, the second man was forced to turn over his position to Kym Weaver, who was clearly quicker going into the last half of the race.

It became an intriguing cat-and-mouse fight, with Fiske having to negotiate knots of uncooperative backmarkers and Weaver steadily edging nearer all the time. The gap between them was a great deal less than it had been when they took the ‘five to go’ board and still there were backmarkers looming ahead. But Fiske’s neat pass of one of them just a lap from home put it out of Weaver’s reach once and for all.

Heat one:

Heat two: