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| Added: 26 May 2014 |
Category: 2014 Oval Racing |
| Trophy goes to Maxwell House |
Adam Maxwell won the final in penultimate round of the 2014 World Series NI for the National Hot Rods. Frankie Lynn, Bradley McKinstry and newly crowned Lightning Rod World Champion Winston Weir took the silverware in the other finals on the night.
I’ve spent a few weeks now trying to work out if there is a magic number of races, classes or cars that hits a sweet spot in getting a meeting just right. At Lochgelly for the European weekend, I didn’t think 3 classes was enough on the Saturday night of the meeting, then there has been many a meeting here this season where five has seemed like too many, and then at Shamwreck when there was four it seemed to be missing something. Perhaps it’s as much to do with the mix of contact, non contact and junior classes. Three non contact classes and a junior class left me feeling that we seriously missed a contact class, so I can now mark that off the list of possibilities. On the upsides though, 4 classes means 12 races, which is less photos than you take during fifteen, which is less to sort, less races to write about and you get away a lot earlier too, so I think we’re homing in on something with the concept of 4 classes being the right amount.
Keeping on the topic of things I’m not sure about I’ll move onto the Lightning Rod World. We’re not half a dozen Lightning Rod meetings into the local season and we’ve already a new world champion. The paint on Nigel Jackson’s car could barely have been dry and the title was up for grabs again with possibly the shortest reign as a World Champion ever and with that came the shortest qualifying series ever, which could now be followed by the longest reign ever and the longest qualifying series ever. The timescales are a killer on the class too, how many times in the past do you see a lot of new cars coming into a class when the world is at a popular track and then a mass exodus after the world final, by the time the world date was announced the qualifying series was half over, so I doubt anyone who came into the class was attracted by the possibility of qualifying and now the world is over will we now suffer with poor numbers for the rest of the season? It has to be said that thankfully last night we didn’t. Surely in the interest of fairness major championships should have time windows when they can be run, the NHR world is always the start of July, the F1 world is mid September, the F2 world is early September, the 2 Litre World is normally July/ August, I think every World Champion deserves to carry the gold roof for around a full racing season.
The politics of when and where aside, congratulations to Winston Weir on winning the world last weekend and to Nigel Jackson on coming runner up. Up until a few years ago we’d never had a Lightning Rod world champion and Weir becomes the third, and Ulster’s domination of rod classes continues. Weir also took the final win at Tullyroan last night, going around the outside of Norman Purdy in the closing stages of the final.
Staying with World Champions (this piece is all linking in quite nicely), I’ve other commitments this coming Friday when the Nationals race for the final round of their qualifying series at Ballymena, so last night’s meeting was the last time I’ll see John Christie with the gold roof as 2013 World Champion and between bike rides and Balmoral I think he’d done a great job and been a great ambassador for the sport as World Champion, and while his current reign may be coming to an end, I don’t think it’ll be his last reign.
In the Nationals it was Adam Maxwell who took the final win following heat wins from Davy Gurney and Simon Kennedy.
In the Stock Rods there was a final win for Frankie Lynn and in the Juniors it was Bradley McKinstry who took the honours in the final.
Correction 26/5/14 - I will be at the last NHR qualifying round at BMR, at the time of writing I thought it was on the Friday 30th of May.
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