Tuesday 1 April 2008

Around the Premier League Tracks 2008
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Tuesday, 1 April
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Tonight’s match was on the Isle of Wight where the Islanders raced against Newport in a Premier Trophy match.


Premier Trophy: Isle of Wight 46, Newport 43.


Both teams were at full strength.

After a string of unimpressive results Newport gave the Isle of Wight a real fright and a run for their money. Indeed if the Wasps had had a number 3 who could actually score some points they most likely would have won this match the way things panned out.

The first four heats were all shared. Craig Watson won the first from Jason Bunyan while Nick Simmons gave notice of what was to come from him by passing Andrew Bargh to win the reserves race. Tony Atkin made it three race winners from three heats for the Wasps after passing Krzysztof Stojanowski and Paul Fry in heat 3 while Glen Phillips provided the first Islanders’ race winner in heat 4 by beating Simmons and Sebastian Truminski taking the score to 12-12.

The Islanders finally broke the deadlock in heat 5 when Stojanowski beat Craig Watson with Paul Fry third for a 4-2 and two point lead. They increased their lead to six points with a Bunyan/Gathercole 5-1 in heat 6 and looked like they might extend it further to ten points in heat 7 as Phillips and Holder held a 5-1 position over Tony Atkin. However Holder lost ground when his throttle got stuck so Atkin nipped through for second. The 4-2 increased the home side’s lead to eight points and it stayed that way when Gathercole won heat 8 for a shared heat taking the score to 28-20.

Paul Fry won heat 9 but again the visitors took second and third after Stojanowski had suffered an engine failure at the back of the field. This 3-3 was followed by another in heat 10 won comfortably by Tony Atkin from Bunyan and Gathercole. Glen Phillips continued the run of shared races by winning heat 11 from Watson and Clews but the Wasps shaved two points from the lead with a 2-4 in heat 12. Nick Simmons won the race by the proverbial mile from Andrew Bargh while Jerran Hart took third taking the score to 39-33.

Craig Watson was excluded from heat 13 after causing Jason Bunyan to fall. Glen Phillips won the rerun but Jason Bunyan had an engine failure at the start of the race so Truminski took second for a 3-2, opening the gap to seven points. Nick Simmons had another big win from Fry and Holder in heat 14 for the ninth 3-3 of the match while in the last heat Newport put a better gloss on the scoreline by taking an easy 1-5 from Craig Watson and Nick Simmons from Jason Bunyan as Glen Phillips suffered and engine failure to cut the winning margin to only three points.

Scorers: For the Isle of Wight – Glen Phillips 12 (5), Jason Bunyan 8 (5), Cory Gathercole 7+3 (4), Paul Fry 7+1 (4), Krzysztof Stojanowski 5 (4), Andrew Bargh 4 (4), James Holder 3+2 (4).

For Newport – Nick Simmons 16+2 (7), Craig Watson 10 (5), Tony Atkin 8 (4), Sebastian Truminski 3+1 (4), Paul Clews 3+1 (4), Jerran Hart 3+1 (4), Marek Mroz 0 (3).

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