Milburn Increases Eureka Lead With Gold Cup Win.

Milburn Increases Eureka Lead With Gold Cup Win.

By Mark Humphrey.

Avalon, Vic/Aus. 27^th December 2015. Victorian Brett Milburn has led a go to whoa 30 lap final to take out Avalon Raceway’s Gold Cup with Darren Mollenoyux and Corey McCullagh filling the minor positions.

The meeting was lucky to get going considering the rain that had fallen during the day making parts of the infield unusable throughout the meeting. Officials had made the call to get the racing underway around 7pm after some initial hot laps to get the track into shape. After the initial 8 heat races had been run officials decided to cancel the top 6 shootout electing to go straight through with the C & B Mains to determine the A Main starting line-up. Tasmanian Tim Hutchins had picked up the C Main win but was unable to finish in the top 6 of the B Main which was taken out by ACT’s David McKay.

McKay, Jones, King, Hunter, Meade and South Aussie Glen Sutherland tacked onto the back of the A Main for the 30 lap final. Brett Milburn and Corey McCullagh occupied the front row of the feature with Milburn getting the jump to lead the 18 car field out from McCullagh, Milnes, Van Ginneken, and Vogels with Mollenoyux holding down 6^th place.

Milburn managed to open up a lead on the following pack and looked comfortable out front. Mollenoyux had picked off Vogels on the first lap and Van Ginneken the very next lap to move into 4^th while Dobson who had started out of 8^th was slowing dropping back through the field after initially getting past Ryan Davis on the first lap. David McKay had led the B Main runners out collecting the scalps of Rod Matthews and Jye O’Keefe early but gave back the spots and a couple more after just a handful of laps.

Meanwhile Mollenoyux was on a bit of a charge and had picked off Peter Milnes on lap 4 to move into 3^rd. On lap 12 the hard charging Mollenoyux had moved into 2^nd with a neat pass on Corey McCullagh while further down the order Daniel Pestka had made his way up to 7^th having got past Dobson and Davis early. Adam King was another who was making up ground in the middle of the pack and had made his way up to 11^th after starting out of position 15.

Brett Milburn had opened up a gap on the field as he made his way towards lapped traffic. Mollenoyux who had been the hard charger of the final made a move on McCullagh on lap 12 to move into 2^nd place relegating McCullagh to 3^rd. 2 laps later Pestka made a move on Van Ginneken to move into 6^th after starting out of 9^th.

There were lots of mini battles going on in the pack as the race had passed the 20 lap mark without a stoppage. Tim Van Ginneken who had started out of 4^th had pulled into the in-field on lap 14 and was the only casualty of the 30 lap feature. Glen Sutherland was mixing it with the other B Main transferees and had made his way up from 17^th to 13^th after getting past McKay. Sutherland looked fast  at times throughout the race but with a stoppage free final it was hard to make up positions and found himself down a lap as leader Brett Milburn rolled past on the high line. Sutherland kept the challenge up to Milburn unlapping himself temporarily before Milburn managed to get past the South Aussie again to put Sutherland down a lap. Milburn would lap Hunter who had made his way up from 16^th to the number 12 spot with Shaun Dobson the last of Milburn’s scalps in 11^th.

The top 7 was virtually unchanged for the last half of the race with the exception of Davis and Pestka who exchanged places on lap 23 only to revert back to their positions the following lap. Milburn had lapped up to 10th position with just a handful of laps left and had used both the pole and top line to weave his way through traffic. Avalon staff had prepared a cracker of a track with several lanes available throughout the 30 lap final.

After 30 uninterrupted laps the pole sitter in Brett Milburn crossed the line to take out the 30 lap feature with Darren Mollenoyux home in 2^nd followed by Corey McCullagh. John Vogels was solid throughout the final and managed to pick up a spot finishing in 4^th from Peter Milnes who dropped a couple of spots to round out the top 5. Next was Pestka after starting out of 9^th with Davis unchanged in 7^th. Ian Loudoun picked up 1 spot to finish 8^th with Jye O’Keefe picking up 2 spots to finish 9^th. Adam King after starting out of 15^th rounded out the top 10 after a battle royale with Dobson over the last 15 laps of the race.

In the end it was a good win to Milburn who was super consistent throughout the night picking up the heat 7 win along the way. Other heat winners were David McKay, Ryan Davis, Peter Milnes, Charles Hunter, Rod Matthews, Shaun Dobson and Darren Mollenoyux.

The Eureka series heads to Simpson tonight for round 8 with the WSS circus coming to Avalon on the 30^th of December.

For more info on the Simpson round go to: http://www.simpsonspeedway.com.au/

For more info on WSS @ Avalon go to: http://www.avalonraceway.com/

2015 Avalon Raceway Gold Cup

 Gold Cup Race Stats

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