SEG - Sprintcar Entrants Group

Ellement Proves His Mettle
Posted Thursday, 11 February 2010 by Fastrax Media

After a "safety equipment" setback in night one resulted in missing the preliminary A Main while running second in the preliminary B Main, David Ellement has had a strong 12th placed finish against a world class field in the final of Performance Wholesale World Series Sprintcars at the Perth Motorplex on Saturday Night.

In just his third season of Sprintcar racing, David and the team are finding the package that it takes to run with the big guns, starting the final nights B Main from pole position, finishing second and transferring to the A Main. David then moved forward from his 16th starting position to finish up his weekend with an excellent result for the team.

Night One started with David recording a fast lap of 14.249 in qualifying, placing him in 13th, just 0.36 seconds behind fast time winner David Priolo. This result gave him a swag of points and started him out of position 7 in his first heat. He was able to move forward, finishing 5th. He then replicated this in his second heat, starting 8th and moving forward to finish in 6th position and gave himself a healthy point�s boost.

These points were enough to place David on the front row of the preliminary B main. As the field rolled around lining up on the track, David, being safety conscious as he is, went to tighten his helmet, but unfortunately ended up pulling on the wrong strap and loosened it. He removed his glove to try and fix it, but ended up dropping his glove on the track. He continued to race until officials spotted his bare hand and was consequently disqualified; watching the remainder of the race on the infield.

After copping a bit of a ribbing from infield commentator Matt Naulty, David was able to laugh it off and declare that he would be back the next night, ready to fight a massive battle to get to the A Main, made harder by his DNF and consequent lack of points.

Come night two and after running the Hagstrom Drilling Cool #12 in with some hot laps, David was starting out of 5th in his third and final heat. After a great start, David settled in to finish in 4th position.

The total of the two night�s points had David once again off pole in the B Main. He made sure that his helmet was tight; checked his gloves, then settled in for the job of maintaining his position, and maintain it he did, finishing second and transferring to the all important A Main, beating more fancied contenders such as Max Dumesny, Ken Sartori, Danny Smith and Mark Wells.

Feature time arrived and David made doubly sure that he had his gloves with him, carrying a red pair on his quad, just in case! He was pushed out onto the track and introduced to the crowd, then fired up to start out of position 16. Racing his hardest, David held his line and was able to bring the car home in a strong 12th place.

As this round of WSS was also doubling as a round of the domestic AHG series, David was thrilled to have made the A Main, especially when considering his closest rival in the points chase, Ken Sartori, had not made the show.

David now sits on 1958 points, a mere one point behind Sartori on 1959. Leader Jamie Maiolo sits on 2088, so a first place finish in the series is still not out of reach!

The next meeting for David and the team will be this coming Saturday (the 13th of February) at Collie Speedway for the third round of the Southern Thunder Series. A small track that is playing host to a number of visiting drivers, David is very much looking forward to the challenge.

�Collie will be an exciting meet for sure. We just hope that we can put on a good show for our sponsors Hagstrom Drilling, Fencing Finesse, Ellement Produce, Design Signs, Watsons Express Transport , DC Ellement Psychological Services, Murphy Racecars, Genesis Shocks and Fastrax Media and of course our fans!�

Don�t forget to check out David�s Facebook fan page site, with all the latest news on David and the team, as well as some awesome photos and links to his sponsors!

Words by Scott Beattie for Fastrax Media.
Photos by Mel Parker for Fastrax Media.