Horror turns to joy for Dillon

RUNNING HOT: Wanganui's Pat Dillon picked up his second victory at Round 3 of the New Zealand Jet Sprint Championship at Meremere on Sunday.PHOTO/FILE

PAT Dillon hopes he never has another finals race like it. The veteran Wanganui racer now has a clear lead on the Suzuki Superboats series of the PSP NZ Jet Sprint Championship, after a thrilling win in the Top 3 eliminator at the Meremere Sprint Bowl on Sunday.

Having seen off fellow title contenders in Canterbury's Peter Caughey and expat Leighton Minnell in furious conditions, where all finishing times dipped under the 45s mark from the Top 12 eliminator onwards, Dillon in his PPG Hulk was matched in the final with the two Hamiltonians in Graeme Hill, who crashed hard at the same event last year, and dark horse Glen Head.

"I was supposed to go last but they put me out first and we gave it death," said Dillon.

"For sure, it was [tense]."

Dillon was horrified to discover that his helmet visor was stuck, leaving it half closed and half open with the cold spray striking his face.

He risked taking one hand off the wheel and trying to fix it, as his 1500hp-engine boat immediately drifted to the left.

"I tried flicking it a couple of times but I just couldn't get it right."

Dillon then struck the side of an island rotation and possibly had flashbacks to his violent crash at Shelterview last season.

But the veteran corrected and completed what would become a final lap time which Hill and Head could not catch.

"I said [at the finish] to the television guy, 'that's us done'. But then the other two went, and we'd won it.

"It was absolutely amazing, we still came faster than we had all day."

The margin back to Hall and Head was only split by 34 thousandths of a second.

As the only driver to make the Top 3 of each round, including two wins, Dillon has now got a solid buffer at the top of the points table, which means the PPG Hulk team will commit to a full six-round campaign - something they were not sold on at the start of the summer.

"If we carry on, we're going to have to do the whole season," said Dillon. "The boat's just running awesome - the harder you drive it, the better it goes.

"It's just scary driving it that hard."

Caughey is in his "Plan B" boat - a Sprintec craft that is borrowed, although the hull is one he built.

Minnell went out in the Top 8 eliminator, while Wanganui's Rob Coley was strong to make the Top 5.

In the Biolytix 400s series, Wanganui's Hayden Wilson rebounded in the best way possible from his crash and head injury at Mount Maunganui to win Meremere for the second year in a row and put himself back in title contention.

But it came at the cost of series leader Ross Travers, whose comments on Saturday that he needed to listen to navigator son Shane or court calamity proved a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Travers Jnr was pointing to the right during their Top 12 run but his father took the boat in the other direction.

"Shane threw his hands in the air despairingly and by the time they had sorted out their detour their day was over," said Neil Jones in the event report.

"As commentator Craig Wiggins said, 'it's a Travers-ty'!"

With unquestionably the quickest boat gone, Wilson and navigator Chris Hausman stepped up and won the Top 3 eliminator, with Hamilton's Ollie Silverton finishing second by 0.9s, thereby taking over the points lead in the series. Te Awamutu's Patrick and Jay Haden overcame problems with their grille to finish third on the day.

As Wanganui's Paul Tulloch - third overall in the 400's series - did not attend the round, Team Travers dropped back only as far as second spot, while Wanganui women's team of Donna Thomson and Monica Couper moved up to third spot after making the Top 5 at Meremere.

Gerry Linklater, who co-drives White Noize with Wilson, finished fourth on the day after their crews worked through a fuel pressure problem.

Having got himself back to fourth on series points, Wilson was encouraged the pressure can be kept on Travers, despite his advantage in speed.

"It's definitely opening it back up, from him running away with it."

The fourth round will be at the tight Riverside Jet Racing track at Crownthorpe, near Hastings, on March 8.