The Kent CTA Fire Kings stormed to second place in Speedway’s National League on Monday (18th. August) with a convincing 20 points win over their final visitors of the season in the normal league campaign, the Buxton Hitmen.
The side from Derbyshire (who Kent visit in a re-arranged away match this coming weekend) languish towards the foot of the NL table and proved to have way insufficient strength in depth to deal with the rampant Kings who are enjoying an excellent August; with this third consecutive victory moving the Central Park-based outfit up to their highest ever league position.
To be fair to the Hitmen, they did have in Liam Carr the most impressive first-time visiting rider seen at Central Park this term – the teenager from Tweedside recording four wins from his five starts and denying all of the home riders a maximum this week. But save for the veteran Tony Atkin, who pitched in with nine points, the side from the Dales came up woefully short: a total of just 11 points from their other five team members said it all.
For the CTA Fire-backed Kings, on the other hand, this was a consummate all around team performance - with all of the septet (making light again of the continued absence through a broken hand of their talismanic skipper, Simon Lambert) recording race victories on the way to clinching the full three match points on offer.
Ben Morley, now fully settled in to the number one race jacket and scoring heavily for a second week running, led from the front racing away to win heat one – the first of three heat wins in a top-scoring 15 points tally for the hugely popular Southend-based speedster. Aaron Baseby anchored that initial 5-1 (the first of six in total and three the local boy Baseby was involved in). Baseby is established now as the king of the bonus points, nine registered in the last three home wins showing what a selfless and reliable team member the Man of Kent is for his home county side.
Heat two saw the march to victory stalled somewhat with first Jason Garrad spinning out of control and losing ground and then his partner Danny Ayres doing likewise: the latter’s efforts to recover inadvertently brought down young Kelsey Dugard (who was destined to end up in the wars several times) and the crowd’s favourite Ayres had to accept his fate of disqualification from the rerun. Garrad made the most of his second chance though – the Thame-based rider sailing to an untroubled win in the rerun. Both reserves had eventful evenings. Garrad provided all the thrills in heat 7 – missing the start, getting past both opposing riders but then going too wide and literally having to bounce back into a correct racing position off the air fence! Ayres meanwhile, looked like it might be a rare off night when in trying to overcome a 15 metres handicap in his second ride (mindful that the Newmarket racer had successfully won from such a handicap the week before) he fell again; but the man the Kent CTA Fire Kings faithful have taken to their hearts, gave the crowd what they wanted in his remaining rides with a paid win, a second place behind Carr, followed by taking heat 12 and celebrating in chest-beating and kiss-blowing style!
Benji Compton continued his dual runs of great form but huge mechanical misfortune – his engine blowing after winning heats 3 and 5 but bouncing back anyhow to reel off two more wins and finish on 12 points. It was paid 12 as well for the inspirational stand-in skipper David Mason to complete a splendid all round team showing. And more than anything else it was an evening of great excitement too - making a lie of those who try and claim too many Speedway races are won from the gate: with no fewer than 16 passes of opponents shared out between two determined sets of riders across a range of incident-filled races.
KENT 57: Ben Morley 17, Benji Compton 12, David Mason 9+3, Aaron Baseby 8+3, Danny Ayres 7+1, Jason Garrad 6+1, Simon Lambert R/R.
BUXTON 37: Liam Carr 17, Tony Atkin 9, Adam Extance 3, Tom Woolley 3, Ryan Blacklock 2+1, Stefan Franaby 2, Kelsey Dugard 1+1. National League points: Kent 3 Buxton 0