South Coast Produces One Of The Classics As Forbes Makes History
By Mark Humphrey
Portland, Vic/Aus. 15th November 2015. Portland’s South Coast Raceway produced one of the more memorable Summit Sportsman Rounds that netted no less than 8 national records, first time winners, and emotional speeches along with Ballarat super racer Matt Forbes creating ANDRA Summit Sportsman Racing history by winning 2 brackets at the same event. To sum up Forbes’s domination here at Portland you have to go back to Saturday’s qualifying where he managed to top qualify two drag cars in Super Gas and Modified Eliminator. In Super Gas Forbes was up against the current National Champ in Graeme Spencer along with a few of the sports elite runners with the goal of posting an ET as close to 6.30 seconds as possible. Forbes managed to be the closest in Qualifying and then took on the highly competitive Modified Eliminator bracket where it simply comes down to sheer horsepower and driving skill with the outright quickest ET (elapsed time) recognised as the number 1 qualifier. Come finals day the rules change somewhat with racers nominating a set time or dial in time that they think they will run over the distance. If they go faster than the time they nominated they are out so it comes down to a lot of pre planning and driver skill to stay in the competition. The Super Gas bracket remained the same on finals day with racers having to stay either on 6.30 or above. As with dial in times if the racer goes under the Super Gas time they are ruled out of the event. So now you get a picture of how hard it is to win one event let alone two on the same day. Most racers will go through a lifetime of racing never winning an ANDRA Xmas tree yet Matt Forbes managed to pick up 2 on the same day.