PEZZUTTI WINS A-MAIN, ROBINSON TAKES MR MODIFIED TITLE

Media release by: By Ben Griffin.

Feature Photo by: Tony Powell.

Andrew Pezzutti made a welcome return to racing at the Castrol Edge Lismore Speedway Saturday night, March 18, by winning the final round of the prestigious Mr. Modified series held over three rounds.

Pezzutti and the team made a tough call to take a break from racing and refresh after spending pretty much every Aussie summer behind the wheel of a race car for the past 25-plus years.

In the past 18 months, Andrew and his son Jack have been keeping race fit by racing dirt karts at the Granny Bowl in Brisbane.

After a well-earned break, the team finally made a call to come back to racing the V8 Dirt Modifieds and with a brand new CT 525 power plant under the hood of his Aussie-built BMI chassis V8 Dirt Modified, Pezzutti was very keen to show everyone that, just like riding a bike, you never forget how to do it.

As if he never spent time on the sidelines, Andrew was on song right away and had his royal fans in the stands on their feet cheering him on every time the N25 Tuff Buckets, Super Rooster, Bozmac. sponsored car came out onto the track.

Pezzutti picked up a fourth place in heat one and a win in heat two, which gave him a second-place starting position for the 40-lap A main event.

Right from the start of the feature race, Pezzutti set sail and he was super fast running the high line to perfection, racing two and three wide.

After a very gruelling 40 laps, Andre crossed the finish line with the win in the final round of the Mr Modified series by a very impressive seven seconds over former Aussie champion David Clark from Brisbane with the overall series champion, Lismore’s Mark Robinson, coming home in a very strong third place.

With the spotlight on Pezzutti’s return to racing, this kind of took the pressure off Robinson coming into the final round of the Mr Modified series.

With the way the points sat after the first two rounds of the series, Mark only needed to finish the night ahead on points of Kevin Britten and Mitchell Randall to become the Mr Modified champion for season 2022/23.

After all the heat race points were added up, Britten was looking the goods with a front-row start and Robinson would have his work cut out for him coming from a seventh starting position, with fellow series contender Randall starting out of position 12.

As mentioned above, with Pezzutti way out in front, the race within a race was between the top three in the series: Britten, Robinson, and Randall.

It was action-packed racing right from the get-go as Britten made the most of his front row start, getting away from Robinson and Randall but eventually Mark and Mitch would catch up to Kevin and the three of them were putting on a great show for the fans, swapping places lap after lap.

Unfortunately on lap 25 Britten pulled onto the infield ending his race.

With Britten’s challenge over, all Robinson had to do was finish in front of Randall to take out the series and that’s exactly what he did.

The 2022-2023 Mr Modified Series Champion at Castrol Edge Lismore Speedway, Australian V8 Dirt Modified Champion, Mark Robinson.   Photo courtesy Tony Powell.

In the end, Robinson crossed the finish line ahead of Randall and in doing so handed Robinson the overall Mr Modified Series Championship.

This was another great result for the Robinson racing team and with the Australian V8 Dirt Modified title being held at the Home of Champions Lismore Speedway over the Easter long weekend, the team will be hoping to continue this hot streak going into Mark’s title defence.

Support class winners on the night.

RSA 4 CYLINDERS:

Winner, N1 Brodie King. 2nd Jeremy Wade. 3rd L9 Nathan Harper.

RSA STREET STOCKS:

Winner, Jakob Lesha. 2nd Sieders. 3rd Joel Williams.

JUNIOR F500s:

Winner, N78 Kobi Wright. 2nd N55 Daisy Sm1th. 3rd N49 Cooper Norman.

SENIOR F500s:

Winner, SQ4 Boyd Chaffey. 2nd N9 Andrew Stevens. 3rd SQ40 Noah Ball.

WINGLESS SPRINTS:

Winner, N1 Jacob Jolley. 2nd N36 Jacob Waller. 3rd N23 Ray Eggins.

The next race meeting is at Lismore Speedway on April 1st.