It's roundy roundy time again

Love the race-face.

The 12/13 speedway season is in full swing again and in the big-gun sprintcar division our very own James McFadden is out there creaming it for Electric Guitars and Racing Cars. James (or J-Mac to the speedway dags) cleaned up at this years Aussie title and earned himself the coveted #1 for a second time. We're proud of you James here at EG&RC. As with most Australian speedway titles, this year also carried with it the usual controversy. Promoters of the event held this year at the SuperCheap Autos Archerfield Speedway - where the stars fly, decided to run the show over three nights instead of the usual two nighter. There were some rather grumpy race fans due to the additional entry fee and three nights of racing (24 heats) I thought was a bit unnecessary and tough on machinary for just 50 entries.
Being a bit of a race format buff, for a title race the format that was run this year did seem a little unfair in my eyes. The field was seeded into two groups. I believe this was decided by 'someones' idea of drivers being of "similar rating" (or so it said in the race rules). This simply meant that the suckers that paid for night one only got to see half the contenders, the slow guys. From there it seemed to be just a complicated mess. The couple of titles I've made it to were as simple as drawing your heats from the barrel, gather some points and run the mains. No BS, no reversing the top six, no pole shuffle, no time trials, just a straight forward race. Our James had accumulated enough points from his time trial and heats to see him straight into the A main out of 2 alongside another old EG&RC friend David Murcott (or Murcy to the speedway dags) on pole. It wasn't until lap 34 of 40 that our James made his move and took the lead.
Be sure to stay tuned for my opinion piece on the speedway state of play coming up soon.