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Pestka headed Brett Millburn and former Australian Champion Jock Goodyer home in the feature race at the Victorian start of the traditional Easter Trail, which visits Avalon, Borderline and Premier Speedways in consecutive nights over the long weekend.
Kendrick ran a hard-fought race of attrition in which only 11 cars finished the feature race which was marred with crashes. He won by racing hard with James Inglis to snap a near two-year winless streak for the veteran West Aussie on the first of two back-to-night nights.
VIC / SA Easter Trail
Goodyer and Pestka were grouped in the same heat race, qualifying #1 and #2 respectively in their group and then replicated that with first and second in their first heat.
Other first round Avalon heat races were won by Domain Ramsay (Heat 2) and Brett Milburn (Heat 3). Pestka would win the first of the second round heats with Ramsay who replicated his heat win before Tate Frost took the final heat of the night.
The stacked feature race saw 20 cars take the green flag and included big names such as Pestka, Goodyer, Frost, former Grand Annual Classic winner Brock Hallett, Glenn Sutherland and Grant Anderson among others.
Petska started from the third position and wasted no time as he moved forward. He was second by Lap 3 and was into the lead by Lap 8. Millburn had an up and down race after he started second and dropped to fourth on Lap 9 and moved back to finish second.
Polesitter Domain Ramsay had a solid race until Lap 9 when he dropped out of the race, a tough end to an otherwise fruitful night of racing.
Ultimately Pestka would go on to win from Millburn and Goodyer, with Tasmanian Frost and Brock Hallett in the top five, as the series moves to Borderline Speedway on Saturday for Night 2.
WA Easter Trail
The WA Easter Trail kicked off at Bunbury Speedway with the two-night series to conclude at the Perth Motorplex on Saturday night.
The event also formed part of the Maddington Toyota Sprintcar Series which will finish with the final round at the Perth Motorplex on April 6.
Heat race winners from the single round were Jason Pryde and Jason Kendrick. The A Dash was won convincingly by James Inglis once he took the lead with three laps to run.
With Kendrick and Inglis off the front row, Jamie Veal, Ryan Lancaster, Taylor Milling and Pryde made up the front three rows of the start grid.
A massive crash on Lap 1 caused by a Veal spin in front of the entire field, caught up Veal, Dayne Kingshott, Kris Coyle, Dylan Menz, Jamie Maiolo amongst others, before the field had even reached the start/ finish line.
Menz was extracted from the wreckage and evaluated by the on-site paramedics after he flipped whilst trying to avoid the carnage in front of him.
With the “work area” rule allowing teams to work on their cars during red flags, Kingshott’s crew took advantage of the extended stoppage in an attempt to get the car race ready for the re-start. A herculean effort saw Kingshott assume the start from the back of the field while Veal did not re-start.
At the green, Inglis was mugged by Kendrick and Lancaster, and dropped to third with plenty of work to do in the 30-lap race.
The race became one of attrition. Milling, Pryde and Coyle all caused cautions that ruled them out of the race.
Inglis and Lancaster fought hard for second position with Andrew Priolo able to close on the duo. That allowed Kendrick to stretch his lead until lapped traffic became an issue, and almost lost the lead to Inglis in the process.
Kendrick would go on to win the feature race with Inglis second and Lancaster third with only 11 cars still running at the end of the race.
“It’s been a long couple of years since my last win, I think about two years. This is a lot more fun when you win races!” Kendrick said.
“We’ve been working so hard on this, it feels like we are back on track now.”
Night 2 moves to the Perth Motorplex for night two of the WA Easter Trail on Saturday.
