Myalup man thunders home

Jamie Maiolo claimed his third feature race win of the season when Round 3 of the Keenquip Race Gear Southern Thunder Series was held at Quit Bunbury Speedway on Sunday night.

The Myalup driver started from second on the grid in the 30-lap final and survived some late-race challenges from Jason Kendrick to win with Shaun Bradford third.

Maiolo led for most of the race, capping off a good night with the solid win.

The classy Maiolo was fastest in qualifying from Bradford and Kendrick and then banked solid points with a win and a third in the heat races.

From there Maiolo was seeded into the Gold Dash alongside Kendrick and little separated the two drivers in the race against the clock that went in Kendrick’s favour, with both starting on the front row for the all-important final.

Kendrick closed the gap in the latter stages of the final and showed his nose inside Maiolo on a few occasions, briefly getting to the lead on lap 21, but Maiolo was up to the challenge and reclaimed the lead and the eventual win.

Bradford started from fifth and joined in the party at the front of the pack late, muscling past Kendrick with three laps remaining, but he then washed up the track and the car didn’t straighten as planned, allowing Kendrick to reclaim the spot.

Ben Ellement converted a sixth position on the grid at the start into a fourth, capping off a good result for the driver despite suffering damage to the car’s floor pan and having throttle linkage problems.

This was on top of a broken rear shock absorber in the dashes.

Despite this it was a solid finish to the double-header weekend for Ellement who crashed out when leading the field in Round 7 at the Kwinana Motorplex 24 hours earlier.

Callum Williamson had a tough night behind the wheel and a couple of non finishes did not reflect the speed he had.

He was battling Daniel Keen for the lead in the fourth before there was contact between the two and the car’s front-end was damaged.

Then in the feature race he started from 14 and was working his way forward before he rode out a massive crash in pits bend after just five laps.

Williamson was shaken by the incident but the same couldn’t be said for his J&J chassis that took a major hit and was severely bent on the top rails.

Andrew Priolo, Ryan Farrell and Scott Chatwin were the other non-finishers with Farrell’s run of bad luck for the season continuing.