Well the trip to Rosedale was very worthwhile as the ”BIG DOG” (Moama Mauler) Lucas Roberts and his team had reason to be excited about their chances of fairing well at the Rosedale  complex.

As right from the outset Lucas showed his supporters he was here to race and race he did as he and Mick Nicola had a fair dinkum duel in the first heat where Mick lead the field for nine laps with Lucas laying down the gauntlet throughout the fiery heat and it wasn’t until they got the white flag for the last lap when Lucas made his move on the high line and rounded up Mick around turn one and coming out of turn two and into the back straight he reached the lead to take out the first heat in convincing style with Wayne Belk in 3rd and the other Bendigo competitor Brad Wicks holding on to 4th spot and considering Lucas came out of sixth position on the grid this was a very good effort.

Another Bendigo driver, Ash Bergmeier tried hard to run Shane Best down but Shane wasn’t about to let Ash past so he had to be satisfied with a 2nd in his first heat of the night.
The third heat was also action packed with Daryl Hickson coming out of 2 and grabbing the lead which he held onto for six of the ten laps when the flying trio of Peter Nicola, Dave Gartner and Michael Doblo thundered past him and a battle developed between Peter Nicola and Dave Gartner to which Dave was the victor by a slim margin and he snatched victory right on the line coming from behind on turn four with Michael Doblo close up behind them 3rd and the early leader Daryl Hickson finishing in 4th position.

The second round of heats got under way with Doblo registering a win from Peter Nicola and our Bendigo boy Mr Hollywood Ash Bergmeier finishing in sixth possie.
In heat 5 we saw Wayne Aylett show his prowess in successfully holding out the consistent Dave Gartner 2nd and Mick Nicola in 3rd place.

Lucas lined up for his second heat in position 2 on the grid and we knew he was going to be very hard to beat from there and he proved us right going on for a very easy victory and the first competitor to rack up two heat wins, followed by Jamie Petch from Trafalgar 2nd and Maiden Gully (Bendigo) racer Brad Wicks in third position.

The third round of heats were taken out by Ash Bergmeier 1st, Michael Burke 2nd and Peter Nicola 3rd,
In the 8th heat Dave Gartner notched up his second win for the evening with Mick Nicola and Michael Doblo filling the minor placing.
Paddy Ward took out the last heat of the evening with Shane Best 2nd, Lucas Roberts 3rd.

The scene was now set for a very exciting feature and 20 cars lined up on the grid for the battle of supremacy in search of the Victorian Title for 2008 after a couple of false starts from over excited drivers and a few restarts after some minor mishaps Lucas got away to a good start and took the lead in the race which turned out to be a real battle all the way by the Victorian Lucas Roberts and the South Australian Dave Gartner who put up a gallant effort in trying to run Lucas down and while this battle was going on up front there was also a lot of excitement back in the pack with Mick Nicola dropping back through the field with electrical problems and the charging forward again in the latter part of the event, another driver well back in the field that also caught the eye was Steve Jordan when he moved up through the field with great speed  at one stage of the race, but the eventual winner of the event was Lucas Roberts with Dave Gartner 2nd, Mick Nicola 3rd, Michael Doblo 4th, Steve Jordan 5th  and our other Bendigo entrant finished a creditable 6th.

Lucas will next line up at the Horsham Speedway for another round of the Super Sedan series on the 23rd of February and then it’s on to Mildura for the prestigious event the Australian title.

“Run with the BIG dogs or stay on the porch”