The young up and coming drivers of speedway took centre stage on Saturday night at Stratford Speedway to showcase their talent and compete in the annual Youth Ministock Spectacular.
Saloons raced for the Sam Korff Memorial and Superstocks for the John and Gary Adamson Memorial trophies, and 52 cars from Stratford and all over the North Island travelled to enter this title.
One driver that stood out all night was Thomas Boniface (67s), who was racing for the first time at Speedway and managed to qualify and compete in the final races. Coming from karting, Thomas is no stranger to racing and showed that he will be a driver to keep an eye on.
Regan Penn (5b) took out the title for this season with a total of 57 points, William Hughes (99s) finished in second place with 54 points and Nicole Hickmott (47p) finished in third place on 50 points.
Saloons made an appearance at Stratford on Saturday night for the first time since November. A field of 11 cars took to the track including three visitors: Gary Marshall (24w) and David Speirs (63w) from Wellington and Josh Smith (272b) from Hawkes Bay. Paula Hinton (25s) took the chequered flag for the first saloon race, leading the entire race from the drop of the green flag. Richard Dreaver (7s) took the win for the second race and Russell Gorrie (51s) won the third race. Quietly racing behind these race winners all night were Thomas and Craig Korff, Sam's brother and father. Although he did not win any of the races on the night, Thomas (16s) gained enough points to win his brother's Memorial trophy with Craig Korff (8s) finishing in second and Paula Hinton (25s) taking out third.
