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Archerfield QLD, Australia | Nov. 14, 2013 - Australian Midget Car champion and defending POWRi Series champion Nathan Smee has blasted out of the gates following a 9 month break, to secure the win at Round 2 of the 2013-14 PORWi Australian Midget Super Series staged at Supercheap Auto Archerfield Speedway last night.
“First meeting of the season for me, the track was good, new car - and you always have teething problems. We had couple of problems in time trials with the brakes but other than that the car was pretty good and we didn’t have to do too much to it. It’s a Spike/Esslinger/Advanced Shocks/American Racing Tyres combination and the motor is beautiful. We’re just going to pick and choose our meetings this year,” said Smee.
The 30-lap Feature race got off to a rough start; particularly for Quick-Time winner in Time Trials (13.679 seconds) Q69 Brett Thomas who took the low line (and the lead) in turn one after the first lap. Smee fought straight back with a slide job but a determined Thomas didn't back off and ended up in the wall out of turn 2; the damage from the multiple rollover terminal for the night.
The next five laps ran trouble free until Q25 Anthony Chaffey spun in turn 4, a third caution light came on with 18 laps to go and fourth light two laps later – both induced by spins. Smee was quick off this final restart then settled into a rhythm with Q89 Michael Kendall and N97 Matt Jackson in hot pursuit. Evenly spaced, the trio caught up to lapped traffic with 8 to go but with four laps remaining, Kendall pulled infield momentarily (reason unknown) he rejoined the next lap but this phantom gremlin handed a hard-charging Jackson second place. N78 Troy Jenkins was right there in the mix, perfectly positioned to claim third.
Race winner Smee was happy with the result, “I ran the bottom and I thought I was pretty good there but then Michael Kendall showed me the way, so I just took his line and didn’t move. I was lucky in the feature, I hit the cush a couple of times and biked-it but that’s racing. We’re happy first night out.”
If the car is ready Nathan plans to race in New Zealand later this month, he’ll be back at Archerfield for the Australian Midget Car Championship January 25 & 26, before heading over to America to race.
Sydney’s Matt Jackson is one of 13 contracted drivers for the series and he shares his thoughts on finishing in second place, “Well we’re trying to run up the front now, we’ve had a good last season at Parramatta (we’re Track Champion over there) so we’re trying to bring that form out to these tracks we’ve never been to before, via the Super Series. Our first round wasn’t too crash hot, we missed the track a lot but tonight we seemed to hit it, we we’re pretty close.”
Troy Jenkins is another of the contracted POWRi Super Series drivers and reflects on his third place finish, “It turned out reasonably well, didn’t do so good time trialling 15th but just kept chipping away and finally got towards the pointy-end thankfully. It’s always a good track here, very juicy early on, we worked our backsides off all night long and we we’re thereabouts in the end but the boys up front were just too good.”
The attrition rate was reasonably high – 7 competitors their result a DNF – but the majority of the field enjoyed the ideal conditions and a great race.
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