Marcus Dumesny has followed in his famous father’s footsteps, to take a wildly popular win on night two of the 48th Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic at Warrnambool’s Premier Speedway.
Max Dumesny was on hand to watch his youngest son have the race of his life, starting from pole but twice having to pass veteran Kerry Madsen to win for the first time at the track his father dominated.
Marcus’ hugely surprising victory sent the capacity crowd of 10,000 into raptures, the majority of who were sitting on ‘Mount Max’ at turn 4, named in honour of Max – who grew up just down the road from the speedway and became its favourite son with three Classic titles of his own.
“This is still sinking in to be honest, to win here, in front of Mount Max, I honestly can’t believe it,” Marcus said after emerging from his winning race car.
“I hit the wall four or five times in the final and was fuming with myself saying ‘Don’t wreck this opportunity.’
“My biggest hurdle here has always been qualifying. As soon as I qualified well, I knew we could have a good night.”
The 20-year-old led home Kerry Madsen with American Cory Eliason third.
Madsen, himself a three-time Classic winner, knew the significance of the result in Australian speedway history.
“Full credit to Marcus, everything I threw at him he had me covered,” said Madsen.
“It’s a cool result for the family.”
Dumesny’s win comes the night after Adelaide racer Scott Bogucki stunned the sport by winning the Friday feature, continuing the wildly unpredictable summer of sprintcar racing.
Sunday will see a final round of heats before a pair of D, C and B preliminaries ahead of the 40-lap, $30,000-to-win Classic finale.
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