Last Saturday night at the Westline Speedway at Whyalla Luke Dillon made his own piece of Sprintcar history as he became the first driver to win both an open and a 360ci South Australian Sprintcar Championship. After starting the A-Main from the front row Dillon led the entire 30 lap journey in the Matt Muir owned #53 on what was a lightning fast, juiced up race track due to several rain delays throughout the evening.

Despite the wet and cold conditions the event was staged in front of a capacity crowd but it was unfortunate that the night was punctuated by rain showers as the conditions didn’t produce the racing that the crowd deserved, with very little passing as the track was simply too fast with only one racing groove.

Second across the line, in what was his final start of the season, was Broken Hill resident Brendan Guerin with former State Champion Mark Caruso surviving to round out the podium. Current Australian Champion Chad Ely fought back from an early incident to finish fourth with Darryl Guerin and Dan Evans being the only other drivers to greet the chequered flag.

Unfortunately almost half of the field failed to finish with the first driver to pull infield being local driver Darren Pickert, who only managed to record one lap before retiring from the race. Defending State Champion Keke Falland was another who failed to make it past the midway point after blowing a power steering hose while running in a strong second placing, while Daniel Pestka and Sam Putland (engine vibration) also fell out of the race late while they were both running inside the top five.

For Pestka it was a night to forget after starting from position five he spun on the opening corner before spinning again after contact with five laps remaining.

Earlier in the night Dillon set a new track record in Time Trials circulating the 360 metre venue in 11.798 seconds before maintaining his position at the top by winning the top 6 Pole Shuffle. The format for the event included a rare three round format with the heat winners being Brendan Guerin, Matt Egel, Darryl Guerin, Daniel Pestka (2) and Jed Bell. The first of Pestka’s two heat victories (Heat 4) saw the Strathalbyn racer set a new 10 lap track record of 1:58.12, lowering the old record by over 7 seconds.