Horsham Motor Sports Club brought their 2017/18 season to a close over the Queens Birthday long weekend with an old fashioned Sunday Butchers Picnic.

Featuring Wingless Sprints, Limited Sportsman, Three Litre Sedans, SSA Juniors, Street Stocks, three Vintage Classes and Horshams own V8 Trucks and, as a salute to the past, mechanics were strapped into the cars they work and set loose to strut their stuff.

A small amount of rain hit the track in the days before and the track crew  worked hard to prepare the racing surface. As usual the track came up beautifully and it was a credit to the team.

In excess of 80 cars nominated in the various classes and as the skies cleared, the scene was set for the always appreciative and supportive supporters of the club to settle in for the action.

Three demonstration classes of Vintage race cars totalling 21 cars, the day got under way with vintage Stock cars who enjoyed the fresh smooth track and racing continued with the track staying hard and fast. Unfortunately the non contact demonstration heat of the Vintage Hot Rods brought out the first red flag when a four car incident took out two cars for the weekend. The pit crews worked hard to repair the other two and the hard luck trophy was presented to Leon Crafter after travelling from north of Adelaide to only blow up his engine in his first demonstration run.

The rest of the weekend for the vintage teams was a rotating trip around the pits fixing and adjusting these time machines some of which date back to the earliest days of speedway.

Wingless Sprints made their last show of the season with two heats and a final on Saturday followed by the same on Sunday and put on a great show keeping the racing fast and tight on a changing surface without many major issues through out the weekend.

With drivers of the calibre of Glenn Watts, Jeremy Beddison, Daniel Kelly and Carly Walsh and Mikayla Hein and local favourite Steven Hateley in the field of 22 cars, the action was furious throughout the heats with the inevitable contact between cars causing most of the stoppages.

Saturday night’s winner was the V4 of Carly Walsh, following her win the Ladies of the Dirt feature at Nyora the week before. Sunday night saw an epic battle in the final which saw the V98 of Peter Logue and the V35 of Glenn Watts battle tooth and nail, in what was the final run for the veteran Watts before retiring from racing. It was an emotional victory for Logue and in a show great sportsmanship Watts joined Logue in his victory lap followed by some of the best donuts seen at Blue Ribbon Raceway in some time by Watts.

Limited Sportsman bought a nice field of cars for the weekend with Jock Baker the class of the field for the weekend with the always fast Mark McDonald, Adam McKenzie and Christopher Ansell hard on his heels most of the event. Saturday nights presentations saw a first for Blue Ribbon with third place Christopher Ansell doing a Shoey after finishing behind Jock Baker and Adam McKenzie. Sunday night Jock Baker again took the win over the ever present Mark McDonald and Travis Matthews.

The weekend was rounded out with Street Stocks and Three Litre sedans ending their seasons with some very competitive racing which saw improved performance from a number of cars that looks good for both classes in the 2018/19 season. SSA Juniors once again showed they are the foundation of our sport with some tight racing and passing which was at time untidy but also very entertaining. These junior driver are still yet to understand that what they think they can do on the race track probably wont work but somehow they manage to pull some of those moves much to the surprise of themselves and their parents.

Horsham’s own V8 Trucks as always came to the party and bought all the tricks with them with multiple lines on the complete track. Luke ‘Redda’ James showed them his abilities once again. Always a crowd favourite the trucks have gained another competitor this year and hope to have more in the future.

To bring the weekend to an end an old fashion mechanics race was held in the sedans and wingless class cars. In the sedans with some experienced ‘drivers’ showed the way with the novice drivers staying low and the racing was clean throughout. In the wingless mechanics events the officials were considering swabbing the ‘mechanics’ as the lap times were as close as 1/1000 of a second off the lap times of the ‘real’ drivers.

With this being the final event Horsham Motor Sports Club would like to thank fans and supporters, sponsors, volunteers and drivers for supporting the club this season and look forward to the 2018/19 season.