Last Saturday night the Golding Motorsport team was thrilled to be getting back on track at the Perth Motorplex to open their 2021/22 season campaign, but although there were promising signs, the night didn’t quite end the way they hoped!!

It was always going to be a tough night for the team: opening night traditionally always is! The team only fired the car for the first time at 8pm on the Friday night!

“The good thing is that it started first go,”laughs Rob. “That’s always a plus, but it was certainly a hectic few days and I have to say a massive thankyou to my Dad who helped to get us started.”

The team made their way down to the Motorplex and with the Powerpalooza event being a festival of Motorsport, featuring Drag Racing and Burnouts as well as Speedway, the pits were crowded. Speedcars ran a condensed format which gave them hot lap qualifying, followed by just one heat race each and then the all important twenty lap feature.

Rob was in the first group of qualifying and would record a 22.929 second lap, placing him sixth in his group and also setting up a sixth place starting position for his heat later in the night.

“Time trials we were horrible,” laments Rob. “The track was so greasy after all the rain during the week, plus we struggled big time and completely missed the setup.”

The team took the car back to their pit bay, cleaned it up and made a few changes to get it ready for the heat, and with every position vital to get a good starting position in the feature, Rob was determined to have a good run.

Starting from position six, Rob had a great start and raced his way into third. First and second had quickly pulled away but to Rob’s credit he began to close the gap on second quickly and was looking very competitive.

“In the heat race we were a lot better! We started last and were fighting for second most of the race. I made a couple of mistakes behind Alfie and Crackers got by me.” This result would see Rob slated to start the feature from position ten. He quickly gained a position and was running in ninth, but it would last only a few laps.

“I was really looking forward to the feature race, but we only managed 4 laps! It looks to be a bit of a freak accident (I’m having a few of them lately!). Coming into turn two, the car popped and backfired then shut off. We checked as much as we could at the track but there’s only so much you can do there. Something has come up and hit the cable that connects the battery and broken the negative wires. Its all repaired now and if there was another race we probably would have changed it out and would have been good to go, but not to be unfortunately. They do say about the twenty cent parts ruining races….well I must be up to a few bucks by now!! We’ll keep plugging away!”

Despite Rob being forced to watch the rest of the race from the infield, he was however lucky enough to watch his brother Dan go on to claim his maiden feature race win.

“I’m thrilled for Dan! I was sat stranded in between turns three and four so had a pretty good view for the most of the race. I ran over to the podium when he crossed the line to congratulate him. It was an awesome race to watch, he was super-fast all night and definitely deserves the win! Hopefully our first one wont be too far away too!”

Rob will have a couple of weeks break now before returning to the Perth Motorplex on the 20th of November for the City of Kwinana Cup.

Golding Motorsport is proudly supported in season 2021/22 by Quantum Collective, My Race Setup, Dasco Supply Group, QVEE, Thermal Dynamics Engine Heaters, Asteel Powdercoaters, AG Composites, Domino’s Spearwood, Hyper Industries and Mills Drainage.

Release by DTN Media.

Picture Courtesy Peter Roebuck.