[BOAT] It’s a family affair at Cabarita

by Sean Henshelwood

(Archived)


It’s a family affair at Cabarita
Review: Rnd#5 (FINAL) Queensland Superboat Championships
Rnd#5 Australian Championships
Cabarita, NSW – September 20-21

The final round of the Queensland V8 Superboat Championships at Cabarita provided a result very reflective of the nature of one of Australia’s most spectacular sports; family, with mother and daughter and father and son combinations dominating all three classes.

In the elite Superboat class, relative class ‘rookie’ Louise Dixon and navigator Paula Arnold took a popular win in the Dixon family’s new True Blue Sprintec, Louise consolidating her strong points lead with a consistent run through the final round. The team was on target for another podium result, but suffered a spin in the first final after Louise lost her vision thanks to a freak wave that came over the front of the boat.

In Group A her daughter Brooke, and Paula Arnold’s daughter Jess also took out victory in Queensland, True Blue Too putting in a consistent performance inside the top ten, providing the True Blue Racing team with their second championship trophy of the weekend.

And to top off the family flavour - reigning 350 Class world champion Mark Garlick held off a late season charge by son Jake, to win the Queensland title by a narrow margin, the pair separated by just a tenth of a second in the final, to reverse the result of the penultimate round where Jake claimed his maiden round win.

Cabarita was the first of the new two-day event formats that the AFJSA is hoping to introduce across the board for 2009, and whilst it was the final points scoring round for the 2008 Queensland Championships, it also doubled as a points scoring round in the Australian Championships, prompting a relatively full card as the V8 Superboat season draws to a conclusion.

SUPERBOATS
In Superboats Louise Dixon had a relatively comfortable lead in the Queensland Championships heading to Cabarita, her only likely threat coming from Albury’s Jim Bailey. In the final washup though Louise remained quick and consistent all day to make the first final, although a visibility problem caused her to spin mid-run, ending the day with a DNF.

“For some reason we were struggling with water coming over the front of the new boat,” Phil Dixon confirmed. “I had it too during my runs and it forced us to change the setup of the boat to bring the nose out of the water. It’s not something we’ve suffered before, but it’s not just the boat because there was no such issue last time out at Maryborough.”

Crew-chief Col Parish concurred. “All I can surmise is that the wind was coming from an unusual angle for Caba, outside of that we’re not sure. It also happened to Phonsy (Mullan) who also runs a Sprintec and prompted all of us that were having problems to fit deflectors to the front of the boat.”

Despite missing the final three, Louise had done enough to take the title win, with husband Phil taking the outright win. To say Louise was excited would be an understatement.. “She was rapt,” Phil laughed. “Over the moon; we all were, it was a great win for the team, both mother and daughter winning their respective classes.”

To add to the True Blue domination, Phil set a stunning time in the Superboat final, his 38.684 the fastest run ever on that circuit layout.

“The new boat is exceptional,” Col agreed, “it just raises the bar further. It’s a pity we had to compromise the setup to counter the visibility issue, otherwise we would have gone quicker. It will be nice to get to Melton and Albury and get some more miles under our belt before the World Championships at the end of the year, because I think we’ll be a serious threat.”

GROUP A
Pre-event, the Group A class looked like being one hell of a showdown. With national points leaders Slade Stanley and Phonsy Mullan having been absent for some months, there was a threat that some of the teams that had been doing some serious homework and miles prior to Caba may just weaken their stranglehold.

It started early with new Group A recruit Tremayne Jukes setting a cracking pace, his 40.219 the fastest run of the first qualifier; faster too than the Superboats.

It wasn’t long though before Stanley and Mullan were matching the Victorian, along with the evergreen Greg Mercier, the relative ‘veteran’ of the class forcing the younger guys to keep the stopwatch focussed on the Az-U-Do team throughout the weekend.

“We’ve been working hard all year and I’m probably driving the boat as well as I ever have, and am at the point now where I’m driving it as fast as it will go. We’re close, but we need a little bit more, but we’re working on it.. The boat is more than capable of going faster, we just need to refine it, that’s all.. There’s life in the old dog yet,” Mercier laughed.. And he wasn’t talking about the boat..

In the end the predictable final two were Stanley and Mullan, with Mercier a deserved third - in fact by the final qualifier, Mercier was quickest, having outrun both former round winners. By the finals though Phonsy upped the ante as he has done all year and set the bar at a mid 39, before taking an outstanding half second off his time in his final run, to take the win with a 39.164.

“I think we just missed the jetting,” Stanley said afterwards. “We just couldn’t find that edge that Phonsy seems to find in his final runs. It was also getting quite difficult to see in that final run, with some pretty long shadows over various parts of the circuit, so I thought my time might be enough, because I knew he’d suffer the same problem, but he took another half second off.. I don’t know how he does it..”

“I almost didn’t,” Phonsy recounted. “We had an off on our first sighting run on Saturday and could very easily have totalled the boat. It was lucky we were only at about 70% throttle. We were heading down the straight one minute, and a foot in the air the next and up the bank, I didn’t know what hit us. There was one pretty shallow area that looked like part of the channel, but you couldn’t tell it was only six inches deep; I guess it’s one of those ‘local knowledge’ things where if you raced here regularly you’d know..”

In the end it was Mullan who took maximum points to draw within three points of Stanley in the Australian title points race, with Stanley claiming second and Mercier a more than welcome third; his result actually closing him to within four points of Brooke Dixon in the Queensland points.. “Close, but no cigar,” he beamed. “Good result though for the team and a promise of things to come.”

For Brooke it was a welcome win, adding weight to her ranking as one of the best Group A pilots in the world. “I drove my hardest, but just couldn’t break into the final three,” she agreed. “It’s just so tough now, there’s eight boats all running within a second of each other, so it’s really just a matter of consistency – if you finish strongly and keep recording good points, then you’ll be there in the end.

“It was very exciting, I’m really pleased for all of us, especially Mum and Dad for all the effort they put in, and for Mum to win Superboats was very exciting.. It’s been a great weekend.”

350 CLASS
For the Garlick family too there was celebration, Mark Garlick crowned King of Queensland, whilst son Jake worked his way past Grumpy’s arch-rival Our Toy for second in the points. “We’re rapt, we had a fat weekend,” Mark Garlick beamed. “The boat was back to it’s former pace and Jake and I went head to head all weekend and finished the final separated by just 15 hundredths. It was a pity though that Brooke (Lucas) crashed in the qualifiers, because he was on song for a great run too, and it would have been the three of us head-to-head all the way to the finals for one of the best races on record… But, if he was any kind of driver, he wouldn’t have crashed…” Garlo laughed.

“I’ve made it hard for him all year,” Kim quipped in reply. “So I thought I’d lay down for him in the final round and let the boy have a go at his old man.. I had to put it up on the bank though, because if I’d just backed off, he would have cried foul and I didn’t want to be too obvious…”

Sadly for the Lucas’, their family triumph may need to wait till the close of the Australian season as their run of offs continued.. “I think when I rolled at Maryborough last round I bent the bottom of the boat too badly, and when we straightened it, we obviously changed the shape and that’s had a big bearing on performance. I crashed twice on the same corner and Kim (Lucas) crashed in the same place once, so there’s been a change in the way it handles various corners.

“It’s a real pity because the boat is performing brilliantly apart from that, so we’re stripping it and sending it down to TJ (Tremayne Jukes, who apart from being an ace-Jetsprint pilot, is also the proprietor of Stingray Boats) to have it straightened properly, so hopefully by Melton, we’ll be right to take the championship lead back from the old bloke…”

With the Lucas boat struggling and the Garlicks fighting amongst themselves, Nathan Penfold quietly worked his way towards the front of the pack and was rewarded with a strong top ten result which faced him off against the Garlick team in the final, his final effort too well within reach of the top two.

The Australian Superboat Championships now heads towards the penultimate round at Melton, not too far from Melbourne on Saturday, October 25.

The Melton facility is located at the rear of McPherson Park, off Coburns Road approximately five kilometres north of Melton.

Queensland Jetsprint Championships
Superboats (points after the fifth and final round)
1. Louise Dixon (207), 2. Jim Bailey (170), 3. Phil Dixon (158), 4. Andrew Page (150), 5. Mick Carroll (119), 6. Peter Freckleton (80), 7. Tony Gustozzi (73), 8. Glenn Roberts (44), 9. Paul Burgess (34)

Group A (points after the fifth and final round)
1. Brooke Dixon (198), 2. Greg Mercier (194), 3. Slade Stanley (182), 4. Kevin Laugesen (157), 5. Robert Coleman (137), 6. Rohan Smith (108), 7. Phonsy Mullan (97), 8. Greg Harriman (95), 9. Tim Howell (93), 10. Teresa Southern (79), 11. Tremayne Jukes (70), 12. Peter Monger (62), 13. Doug Fraser (58), 14. Ted Sygidus (52), 15. Jamie Green (40), 16. Derek Drummond (32), 17. Darren Watkins (28), 18. Steve Lackas (19), 19. Jo Shellcott (16), 20. Dan Walton (15), 21. Brett Shellcott (15), 22. Sam Everingham (9), 23. Jim Campbell (5), 24. Jeff Flemming (5), 25. Dave Evans (5), 26. Gerard Elphinstone (5)

350 Class (points after the fifth and final round)
1. Mark Garlick (224), 2. Jake Garlick (210), 3. Brooke Lucas (190), 4. Nathan Dickinson (145), 5. Kim Lucas (120), 6. Tremayne Jukes (113), 7. Nathan Penfold (89), 8. Glenn Roberts (84), 9. Darryl Squires (83), 10. Ashley Coyte (71), 11. David Coyte (67), 12. Dave Penfold (64), 13. Chris Bollins (55), 14. Daryl Dickinson (54), 15. Daniel DeVoigt (53), 16. Colin Bellert (33), 17. Jamie Taylor (32), 18. Rhiannon Dickenson (11), 19. Derek Drummond (5), 20. Arron Morrisby (5)

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Australian Superboat Championships
Superboats (points after round#5 of 7)
1. Phil Dixon (224), 2. Louise Dixon (185), 3. Jim Bailey (146), 4. Andrew Page (145), 5. Tony Gustozzi (197), 6. Peter Freckleton (104), 7. Mick Carroll (99), 8. Paul Burgess (79), 10. Dean Finch (46), 11. Jody Ely (31)

Group A (points after round#5 of 7)
1. Slade Stanley (237), 2. Phonsy Mullan (234), 3. Greg Mercier (188), 4. Rohan Smith (187), 5. Ted Sygidus (153), 6. Kevin Laugesen (130), 7. Brooke Dixon (128), 8. Robert Coleman (103), 9. Teresa Southern (71), 10. Steve Lackas (55), 11. Greg Harriman (40), 12. Tim Howell (39), 13. Brett Shellcott (24), 14. Adrian Kemp (23), 15. Peter Monger (23), 16. Ged Elphinstone (17), 17. Damien O’Leary (15), 18. Darren Watkins (15), 19. Jeff Flemming (10), 20. Jo Shellcott (10), 21. Simon Zarb (9), 22. Kim Legerski (5), 23. Matt Legerski (5), 24. Shane Loughnan (5)

350 Class (points after round#5 of 7)
1. Mark Garlick (220), 2. Brooke Lucas (208), 3. Tremayne Jukes (155), 4. Kim Lucas (142), 5. Glenn Roberts (133), 6. Jake Garlick (132), 7. Darryl Squires (127), 8. Brenton Maher (71), 9. Sheldon Clark (53), 10. Chris Bollins (45), 11. Glen Arundel (33), 12. Darren Wade (25), 13. Robert Hallum (25), 14. Troy McKenzie (19), 15. Shane Allen (5)




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