By Sheldon Nouchy | posted on November 29, 2019
GUN Formula 125 driver Jacinta Tester became the first female winner of the prestigious 31st Noel Pearson Memorial on Saturday at Attwell Park, tying with Jamie Langdon in the Limited Sprintcars.
The Memorial is awarded to the club member who has the highest points for the night with Tester and Langdon both having four wins from four starts.
The also acknowledged the contribution of two of its current members, Karla and Wayne Watson, who were awarded Life Membership.
Productions began the night with a solid nine-car field. Unfortunately this was reduced very early in the opening heat when Finlay Mills got caught out on the slick track spinning in front of the field to be collected by Paul Colmer and damaging her car.
After the resulting restart, former state champions Darren Blight and Ron Belfield gave the crowd a teaser of what was to come later, had it not been to a damaged diff in the second heat to Belfield and forcing him out.
Blight would go on to claim the three heats and the feature. The battle for second went down to the last couple of laps between Shane Devonshire and former Street Stock driver Paul Colmer who had returned driving the Jason Batchelor-owned Production.
Devonshire and Colmer ran the highline door-to-door for much of the 12-lap journey until the latter made a pass with just two laps to go, taking second away from Devonshire.
With cars coming from across the state, the Modified Sedans made a welcom return to a club meeting; they race hard, clean and often went three wide to put on a great show.
Debuting his newly-built VZ Commodore Kalgoorlie’s Brendan Selleck started off the back in the first heat to run up against the wall to draw first blood and take the win. Unfortunately during this heat the night went up in a bellow of white smoke for Bill Penn, whose engine let go in a big way.
The following two heats were just as fiercely fought as the first with Matt Kata and Sean Theyer being victorious.
In the final, Theyer started from pole position and during the opening stages raced side-by-side with a number of drivers until breaking free. Kata fell from a podium finish while running second when he almost spun in turn three and four and a number of cars narrowly avoided collecting him.
Paul Stevens, who had travelled from Narrogin, finished in second with Calon Ball, who missed a heat due to work rounded out the podium.
In the remaining divisions last year’s Noel Pearson winner Jason Batchelor (Street Stocks) plus Tyler Fulcher (Production Division 2) and Jasmin Kennedy (Juniors) all took out feature wins.
The club next event is on January 4 when it kicks off a big month with the USA vs WA Speedweek finale before hosting the final two nights of the USA Late Model Invasion Tour on January 18-19.
