by Geoff Rounds
JAMIE Veal showed his ever-growing experience when he raced to a comfortable victory in the eleventh and penultimate round of the Eureka Garages and Sheds series at Avalon raceway on Sunday night.
The Warrnambool driver led all of the 30 lap journey to win from Tasmanian Shaun Dobson and Mike Van Bremen who is set to retire at season’s end after 19 years in the sport.
Veal who started from position two next to polesitter Mitch Foster for the feature race showed blistering speed and was too much for Dobson who gave chase since getting to second on lap eight.
The pair battled through lapped traffic inside the first four laps and waged their own race to the finish while Michael Tancredi was putting in his best performance in fourth in a tense battle with rookie Luke Walker. The pair showed some superb racing beyond their years and both Walker and Tancredi look exciting future prospects in the sport.
Stephen Bell became the story of the night when he jumped out of Matthew Eastham’s car and into Darren Hickman’s machine just moments prior to the final, when motor dramas plagued the Bell car. He gave up starting position six for changing cars and had to come from 18th and finished 11th.
The leading pair came close late in the race to maybe changing positions at a restart when Dennis Jones and Wayne Logue became hooked together and spun on the main straight and claimed Simpson’s Phil Lock who drove into the mangled mess.
The final laps were all Veal’s though as he raced away to defeat Dobson and now looked forward to finishing the season on a high note with just a handful of races left.
Veal’s win and a fourth placing the previous night at Simpson Speedway saw him also collect the overall pints and prizemoney for the annual Great Southern Sprintcar Showdown from Van Bremen, Dobson and John Vogels.
“I think since the Lismore round of World Series (Sprintcars) we’ve really been improving each night,” Veal said.
“It all comes together well when you get everything just right, at the moment we’ve been doing that and now I want to do really well at my home track in a couple of weeks and hopefully get the same result.”
Dobson has accumulated 3229 points, sits in third overall and will go into the final Eureka round in a tight three-way battle for series honours with current leader Jeremy Cross (3290) and Wayne Milburn (3252).
It is the finish promoters dream of and they’ve got it and with the likely addition of some other interstate drivers entering all points will be valuable at the series grand final at Premier Speedway, Warrnambool on March 22.
Just two race meetings remain for the season at Avalon Raceway on March 29 and on Good Friday, April 18.
For more information contact Jeff Drew 0418 160985 / Geoff Rounds 0413 024413.