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The club is actively searching for a replacement for its controversial black clay surface which has provided sub-standard racing on the opening three events of the year.
The problem is there’s now no time to replace the surface ahead of the blue riband Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic and Australian Sprintcar Championship.
What’s more the club can’t even locate a surface suitable to replace what they currently have.
“I’ve been president for a long time and this has been the most challenging circumstance that I’ve been involved with, there’s absolutely no doubt about that,” Premier Speedway president Richard Parkinson said in a locally-produced video giving an update on the predicament.
“We’re on our knees at the moment… it really is a battle at the moment, but it’s a battle we’re going to win.”
In a damning assessment of their opening three Sprintcar events of the season, Premier Speedway general manager Michael Parry gave a grim summary.
He labelled Night 1 a “one or two” out of 10, Night 2 “three out of 10”, and last Saturday’s well-attended Max’s Race just two out of 10.
As a result the decision has been made to replace the maligned black clay surface at the completion of the season – but the club is stuck with it for the Classic and Aussie Titles in January.
“We’re working our butts off to try and find and make sure we get a better product, but at the end of the day there’s no hope of changing something shortly as in the next couple of weeks,” Robbie Paton, the speedway’s vice president said.
“We’re not producing the goods… we are trying our best to produce something that is manageable and we’re coming up short at the moment.”
Former Classic winners and Warrnambool locals James McFadden and Jamie Veal are currently assisting the club with the surface.
The plan is to try and widen the current surface to help the product and assist passing.
The Speedway is actively searching for a replacement surface – but finding the three thousand cubic metres of clay required is proving a challenge.
“We’re not blind, we can see that the stuff is just not doing what we hoped it would do… we’ve got people out every night and every weekend looking and trying to work out plans of what we’re going to do,” Paton said.
“We need to get this right, we can’t afford to stuff this again.”
Premier Speedway is in the unique position of hosting the two biggest events of the Australian speedway calendar – the Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic and the Australian Championships – on consecutive weekends from January 19.
Warrnambool’s next event is the traditional New Year’s Day Speed Week Sprintcar event on January 1.
