The Central North Coast Sporting Car Club has welcomed more than 30 competitors to its first events for the year with the Pit Fence Motorkhana and Khanacross taking place over the weekend.
Celebrating the Nabiac Motorsport Complex’s recent renovations, the event saw 17 competitors running in Saturday’s motorkhana and 28 in Sunday’s khanacross – with 11 entered into both events.
A number of those competitors who competed in the two events were fighting it out at the top of the time sheets, starting with the motorkhana, where competitors were faced with seven tests.
Taking out top honours was the number one seed in Evan Vale, however there was very little separating him and his two closest rivals in Steve Murray and Derrick Woods.
All three drivers enjoyed at least one test victory throughout the day, although interestingly it was the driver who had the least amount of minor wins in Vale who came away with the outright two-second victory.
Having won the first test, Vale then fell short to Woods on the next three before Murray was fastest on the remaining three tests. However it was Vale’s consistency across all seven that helped secure him the win after a slow fourth run for Murray and fifth run for Woods cost them the event.
Class A winner Jeff Williamson ended the event in a respectable fourth place and Mitch Martin rounded out the top five, although it was the sixth placed Jasmine Chellew who would have been considered as one of the day’s standout performers.
With junior drivers making up more than a third of the field, it was Chellew who was the most impressive despite a very sluggish opening two runs, with the 13-year-old recovering nicely over the remainder of the event and taking out a host of top three outright finishes, as well as both the Junior and Ladies class.
On Sunday’s khanacross, it was Murray who would enjoy the spotlight after convincingly taking out the five run event by nine seconds over William Swan.
As the only driver whose outright time made it under six minutes, Murray made no mistakes and posted the fastest time on the opening three runs.
Despite losing the final two runs to Swan, Murray had already built a big enough buffer after a dream start where he was already nine seconds ahead of Swan.
Rounding out the event’s top three just under two seconds ahead of Woods was Dan Smiles, while Brett Sutherland finished a further one and half seconds slower in fifth place.
Vale had a disappointing Sunday with a 12th place outright, just three places ahead of the highest ranked junior in Aiden Glew. Karina Yates ended the day as the fastest female, coming in at 18th respectively.
The Central North Coast Sporting Car Club’s next event will be an off road event on 6-7 March.