Boxing Day 2010 will go down as a memorable one for Warrnambool’s Darren Mollenoyux as he was victorious in round 6 of the Eureka Garages and Sheds Sprintcar Series and the Gold Cup at Geelong’s Avalon Raceway tonight. ‘Molly’ led a large majority of the 30 lap Main event in convincing fashion from closest challenger Stephen Bell and young gun Tim Rankin.
Mollenoyux recovered from last weekends incident at Warrnambool that saw him damage his car requiring chassis repairs. In accepting the Gold Cup Mollenoyux said, “luckily we don’t have crashes like last weekend every week, big thanks to the guys for rebuilding the car, I think we deserved this one tonight.”
“I could see Bell (Stephen) there, he stuck his nose in before that yellow and it gave me a bit of a wake up call and I got back on it and got it done. We’ve had a shocking start to this season but we’ll be back Thursday night for World Series.”
In usual style, Bell was gracious in defeat remarking, “we’ve just got to get wound up about 5 laps earlier and we’d be right. I kept watching the lapped cars going around the top and thought well we’ll just keep on going. The when they brought the yellows on and it was single file restart with clear track I knew it was going to be tough to get around him.”
Rankin took advantage of his pole starting position early ahead of Bell and quick starting Mollenoyux from the second row. Mollenoyux was quick to take Bell on and move to second, before coming after race leader Rankin just a handful of laps into the main event. Bell followed suit and bumped Rankin back to third as he charged after Mollenoyux for the lead. A red light stoppage 8 laps into the race for Mike Van Bremen after a violent flip ended his Boxing Night efforts along with Nick Lacey after suffering damage in the incident.
Mollenoyux lead Bell, Rankin, Amato, Hickman, Ramsey and Anderson at the single file restart with 22 laps to go and took advantage of clear track. The V52 quickly encountered heavy lapped traffic, taking most of his competitors around the outside in spectacular fashion. Bell began his charge for the lead with 12 to go before a yellow was brought on with 10 laps remaining.
Another single file restart gave Mollenoyux the chance to run away from Bell and saw the Warrnambool Crane Hire sponsored car seal the win on Boxing night ahead of Bell and Rankin. Grant Anderson, John Vogels, Jamie Veal, Simon Amato and Brett Milburn battled it out for the minor positions and Domain Ramsey, Ryan Davis, Carl Ludeman, Rod Matthews, Eddie Lumbar and Andrew Cox rounded out the field. Darren Hickman and Dylan Jenkins registered DNF’s.
The Top Six Time Trial saw then top qualifier Jamie Veal place fifth quick and as a result was relegated to fifth starting position for the main event. The big winner of the time trial was Tim Rankin coming from fifth on points after the heat races to be quickest time, and gain pole position for the A-Main.
The B Main was full of action with Rod Matthews, Dylan Jenkins, Nick Lacey, Mike Van Bremen, Ryan David and Andrew Cox making the top 6 and taking a last chance to race into the feature of the night.
The declared C-Main saw Brad Foster, Ron Dalton, Jamie Stark, and Simon Van Ginneken transfer to the B-Main for their last chance of the night to make the main event all of which had no success in transferring.
Earlier in the night heat races were won by Bell, Brett Milburn, Mollenoyux, Veal (2) Rankin, Hickman and Eddie Lumbar.
The Modified Productions supported the festivities of the evening with their annual Christmas Cup won by Mark Carlin ahead of Justin Drew, Peter Bodger, Garry Ainley, Gavin Ough, Brian Hart and Nathan Drew. Heat races were won by Justin Drew, Carlin (2) and Darren Hossak.
Avalon Raceway now looks forward to a huge night on Thursday when World Series Sprintcars comes to the venue before Friday night’s Mototech sponsored Oval Express Formula 500 Series round on Friday night.
Website; www.avalonraceway.com
For more info contact Jeff Drew 0418 160 985 / Gavin White email gwxp@speedway.net.au