Dew back in Hot Rod winner’s circle
Organiser: Spedeworth When: September 1 Where: Aldershot Raceway Starters: 24.
It’s been a long time since Aaron Dew last took the laurels in a National Hot Rod final – three years in fact. But the Ipswich man has been in increasingly good form of late and, to prove it, managed to get across the line first to lift final number two at the Rushmoor oval.
The heat wins fell to another pair of drivers who were overdue a touch of good fortune, Dick Hillard – becoming something of an Aldershot specialist – and Shaun Taylor.
Having taken his first win in the class the previous Monday at Ipswich, Lance Bowen looked as though he might well repeat the exercise in the opening race here, making a great start to head Brett Collison into Turn 1 and staying out front while the rest squabbled to decide who should challenge him. A long period of poor results and DNFS had moved Hillard much further down the grid than usual and he took advantage of the situation to overhaul Collison and settle on the leader’s tail.
Although it took a couple of side-by-side laps to make the pass stick, Hillard’s outside line thrust eventually paid dividends and he was clear of the field at half distance. But from then on, and once the pack had overwhelmed Bowen, the leader was always being reeled in by Scott Bourne and Dew. Bourne – going the best he’s done since returning to NHRS – finally managed to drop Dew off his tail and got on terms with Hillard, although it was too late to mount a serious challenge.
A three-wide charge into the first turn at the start of heat two looked as though it might well end in tears, but they all survived, with Collison out front this time from Bowen and Taylor.
It was Taylor who moved up to press and then pass Collison (who later spun and got collected by Bradley Dynes) but had towed Ivan Grayson through with him. Grayson kept the pressure on all the way to the finish without ever actually looking as though he was going to make it past, although it might have been interesting if the race had gone another couple of laps with
Lee Carlin and Dew closing in fast nearing the finish.
Following a false start to the final when some marker tyres got knocked onto the track, there was a rerun of the first attempt, with polesitter Dew beating Grayson away and Jack Blood ducking under Grayson to go second.
Dew and Blood were soon sitting pretty in the premier places, but there was stiff opposition hard at work behind them, where Jason Kew, Carl Waller-barrett and Rob Mcdonald were busy chasing them down.
The trio took advantage of the smallest of errors from Blood to relegate him from second to fifth in a trice.
Dew was still carefully picking his way through the backmarking traffic and once Kew had managed to leave the other pair behind, he was always narrowing the gap. When Shane Bland’s limping car briefly obstructed Dew’s Ginetta, that was all it took to put Kew a lot closer to the leader. Dew was able to calmly stabilise his four or five car length advantage however to hold on to the win. Waller-barrett managed to stave off the threat from Mcdonald with Chris Haird the next man home after he too had pushed Blood further down the order.
Results
Heat one: 1 Dick Hillard (Vauxhall Tigra); 2 Scott
Bourne (Vauxhall Tigra); 3 Aaron Dew (Ginetta G40R); 4 Jack Blood (Vauxhall Tigra); 5 Bradley Dynes (Vauxhall Tigra); 6 Ivan Grayson (Vauxhall Tigra); 7 Carl Wallerbarrett (Vauxhall Tigra); 8 Jason Kew (Ginetta G40R).
Heat two: 1 Shaun Taylor (Vauxhall Tigra); 2 Grayson; 3 Lee Carlin (Vauxhall Tigra); 4 Dew; 5 Rob Mcdonald (Vauxhall Tigra); 6 Blood; 7 Kew; 8 Waller-barrett.
Final: 1 Dew; 2 Kew; 3 Waller-barrett; 4 Mcdonald; 5 Chris Haird (Vauxhall Tigra); 6 Blood; 7 Carlin; 8 Gavin Murray (Vauxhall Tigra); 9 Stuart Mclaird (Ginetta G40R); 10 Bourne. Points (after 4/14 rounds):
1 Waller-barrett 166; 2 Dew 162; 3 Kew 151; 4 Shane Bland (Vauxhall Tigra) 148; 5 Blood 139; 6= Mclaird and Haird 129.