NIF2.com - 2012 - #35 – Ballymena Raceway

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Added: 15 Sep 2012	Category: 2012 Oval Racing
2012 - #35 – Ballymena Raceway – 14/9/12
On paper this looked like an excellent meeting, certainly one of the meetings when I read down the fixture list at the start of the season and had marked down as one I’d like to get to. With the sharing out of classes this season the F2’s and Nationals don’t seem to have been at the same meeting at Ballymena too many times, the Gp 2 Irish is normally a good race too. Refreshed from a week in the sun, I went off and played indoor football, as I do on a Friday night and arrived at Ballymena feeling a bit shattered and having missed most of the Gp 2 Irish which was on when I arrived. I also forgot to bring a notepad and accidently wiped the notes I’d taken on my phone, so the rest of the report will be sketchy at best. Curtis Greer was first across the line in the Gp 2 Irish, Lucinda Smyth was second and beyond that all I know is that Brian Alexander who had been 5th was moved up to 3rd following scrutineering, so something must have been not right in the top 3. The second gp 2 race was more like a banger race with several needle matches, a few wrecks and a bit of afters, proper end of season stuff, if you ask me, although I’m sure those involved don’t share my view on it. I’ll once again make reference to how good a meeting this looked on paper, no less than 18 F2’s booked in according to the Ballymena website, well, I missed heat 1 which must have been a cracker because there was only 6 cars in heat 2 and the final. Craig McConnell the eventual winner in a race as dull as dishwater. I hope they are much better on Sunday at Tullyroan. The stockrod final produced an very tight finish with first and second crossing the line side by side and third and fourth right behind them. I’ll not pretend to know anything about the 1300’s, other than it takes 40 of them to have a race, and there wasn’t even the 22 that were booked in. A bit of action in heat one early on, a bit of a scrap between 70 and 121 in the final, and I didn’t even bother with watching the second heat. A nine car grid for a National Championship is embarrassing, 23 won it, I don’t know if he is one of ours of one of the visitors, such is my interest in the class, which on the night wasn’t a patch on the National Hot Rods when it came to contact racing. So onto the Nationals, Thomas Dilly was the big wreck in heat one, when too many cars went for too small a gap and he ended up hung up on his side on the wall on the pit bend. Heat two seen Rab Forsythe the victim of the big wreck when he came together with Glenn Bell and Gary Woolsey and got turned into the wall mid straight, the impact looked to rip the roof off the car. The final seen a controversial win for John Christie after Thomas Dilly was judged to have not held his line.















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