Baypark sprint car racer Bradley Tyrrell delivered on early season promise when he drove away from some of the sport's top names to win the 20-lap feature race on Saturday night.
The 17-strong sprint car line-up was the best seen at Baypark since the summer holiday meetings.
Tyrrell won the opening heat from grid 7 and drove from grid 10 to fifth place as Auckland's Jamie McDonald won the second heat.
Starting from the outside of the front row Tyrrell led for most the feature race apart of a mid-race exchange with former NZ champ Dean Brindle (Hamilton).
Auckland-based US racer Ricky Logan was third ahead of Daniel Eggleton (Auckland) and McDonald. "It was my best ever night in a sprint car. I have won a couple of features before but not against that quality of competition," said Tyrrell.
While Brindle managed to make a mid-race inside pass on Tyrrell for the lead an immediate counter-attack switched the positions back again.
"Racing against Dean like that was magic. The track was racey with two lines and against a driver like Dean you can run millimetres apart," Tyrrell said.
Tyrrell has made the transition from being one of New Zealand's top kart racers into an 800-horsepower sprint car. He's now campaigning the car driven to second place at the 2011 NZ Championship by California racer Tommy Tarlton. "We have learned so much from racing with the Americans. After we got the car we also got Tommy's crew chief to stay in New Zealand a bit longer and help us," said Tyrrell.
"When I started karting it took about seven years to really learn the sport. This is my third season in sprint cars so I'm still learning.
"Doing the maintenance and preparing the car is so important and I've done some fitness work as well which has made me stronger and helped me tonight."
Tyrrell raced karts for 13 years and owns a kart supplies shop.
"Karts are a great place to learn about racing. When I started lapping cars it was the karting experience of reading the traffic that helped me."
Brindle said he enjoyed the battle and hopes to return for one more Baypark outing before the end of this season.
"It was a good battle and a really good track," said the 2009 New Zealand Champ.
"I had him (Tyrrell) going into the turn but he had the momentum up high to pass me back again."
Super saloon honours went to former national champ Dean Waddell but it was Tauranga's Gavin Dyer who had the most consistent night and began to show off the potential of the first of the Tauranga-built Pro-X chassis super saloons.
Dyer posted a first and second in the heat races and was in a threatening second place behind Waddell in the feature race.
Tirau's Michelle Wymer continued her impressive late-season form, driving away from former national champ Brent McClymont (Tauranga) and newly crowned champion Jeff Barron (Matamata) to win the saloon car feature race.