Mike McLachlan enhanced his reputation as the best stockcar teams racer in Hawke's Bay but remember the name Hayden Barnett.
A two-time winner with the Hawke's Bay Hawkeyes Superstock team at the ENZED Teams Champs in Palmerston North, the glamour event on the Speedway New Zealand calendar, McLachlan, 37, was at his brutal best as his Orange Roughies team did the best of the two Bay outfits with a third placing in the nine-team Peter Barry Memorial stockcar teams event which ended at Meeanee on Saturday night. In the race for third against the Wanganui Vulcans McLachlan took out three Vulcans on one lap and then took out the Vulcans runner, Darryl Taylor, who was leading the race, with a reverse hit and this allowed Brandon Symes to secure the win for the Roughies.
"We did it for the fans," the humble McLachlan told the crowd afterwards.
It was a brilliant effort from the Roughies who had earlier lost to the defending champions, Rotorua Rascals, in their semifinal. Symes and veteran Tony Palmer were the only drivers to finish the race against the Vulcans as Michael Smith was taken out at the start and Kairyn O'Brien a lap before McLachlan almost single handed hushed the Vulcans supporters.
The more experienced Roughies were always going to upstage the other Bay team, the Meeanee Maulers, at the two-night meeting which is staged in memory of former Central Hawke's Bay businessman and farmer Peter Barry who died in 2009 after a speedway incident. The Maulers failed to make the top six but one of the team Hayden Barnett, 26, provided the ideal form of consolation for this disappointment and proved he has the potential to become a future McLachlan with the entertainment he produced on Saturday night.