Kaiden Manders and the J&S Drilling W60 Sprintcar Team have successfully defended their Australian 360 Sprintcar Championship at the Kalgoorlie Speedway.
The 21-year-old Manders becomes only the second driver in the 15 year history of the event to score back to back victories.
On Friday night several groups of drivers contested Time Trials around the 450 metre oval.
Victorian Tim Van Ginneken was the fastest in his group with a 13.573 second circulation, with Manders coming out in a later group and recording the second quickest overall time of 13.595 - just 0.022 of a second off the pace.
Manders went from fourth to first in his opening 10-lap heat race and then maintained his second spot throughout the next event.
He was set to line up in position 2 for the Preliminary Main event, but a heavy rain shower caused the event to be cancelled.
In his Saturday night heat race Manders went from fourth to finish second.
He lined up alongside Van Ginneken on the front row for the 40-lap Championship decider and was never headed.
Manders set the fastest lap time in the race (14.379 seconds) and crossed the line 1.329 seconds ahead of the more experienced Victorian.

Following his victory Manders had this to say in an interview at the track:-
"I would like to thank the whole J&S Drilling Team. We worked really hard all weekend. It was a really stressful time. We wanted it so bad. I knew we had the car speed. We did what we had to do to get the win."

And when asked about Van Ginneken being right with him:-
"I knew Tim was quite close behind me. I made sure on the last restart that we didn't leave anything on the table. I just took off. Luckily we had the car underneath us to win the race."

The J&S Drilling Sprintcar team have indicated that they will defend their Australian Sprintcar Championship next season at the Simpson Speedway in Victoria.

The J&S Drilling W60 team wish to acknowledge the support of their loyal sponsors who enable us to keep on racing.
Many thanks to – Non Stop 24hr Fitness, Neptune Skip Bins, PJW Haulage, S&J Excavations, Cowara Contractors, Dicker Speed Shoppe, Gold's Gym, NT Plumbing Maintenance Service, JAK Civil, Horrell Motorsport.

Press Release
Prepared for J&S Drilling by Ken Brown (0421173271)