Victorian Ryan Davis survived an action packed and caution ridden A-Main at the 7Mate Northline Speedway in Darwin to win the shortened Make A Wish Sprintcar Cup. In a race that lasted almost 40 minutes and finished well after mid night Davis never led a lap on his way to his first ever Sprintcar Main event win.

“I’m speechless. It was one of those races that you just had to stay out of trouble to get a result. You can’t win it if you’re not running at the end” added Davis on the podium.

Second place went to Western Australian Kaiden Manders with Ben Atkinson the first of the locals in third. Chace Karpenko, who was battling for the lead just prior to the declaration, was fourth with Jason McIver, Luke Robinson, Steven Ling and Jamie McInnes the only other classified finishers.

Jason Gebert looked like the likely winner with four laps to go as he opened up a big lead but his race ended upside down after hitting the wall. It was at this point the race was declared handing Davis the win.

The A-Main got off to a horrific start with five cautions before a lap had been completed with the result being an indian-file race start to reduce the chance of contact.

During the initial caution periods, the main casualties were pole sitter Tim Van Ginneken, who spun and was sent to the rear, Dave Murcott, who rolled hard on the back straight after contact with Mitch Wormall, Rusty Hickman and Glen Sutherland.

Once the race got underway Mitch Wormall looked the man to beat as he was extremely fast on the cushion but Chace Karpenko eventually ran him down with the duo racing hard for the lead with 10 laps to go until Karpenko spun and was collected by Van Ginneken. Wormall would also retire with a cut left rear in the incident handing the lead to Gebert.

But Gebert would then crash out handing the win to Davis, who started the main event from position 13.

The heats started off in dramatic fashion with heat 1 winner Danny Porter initially being disqualified for being underweight handing the win to runner-up Jason Gebert but when heat 2 victor Mitch Wormall also went under weight it was found that there was an issue with the scales. Therefore, both drivers were reinstated as heat winners. The third heat went the way of Western Australian Jake Beard-Miller, who got the better of Dave Murcott with a tremendous high groove run.

The second round of heats saw a complete invert with the fast lane being right around the top. Chace Karpenko won the fourth heat from the front row while the remaining two heats saw Western Australians Mitch Wormall and Jake Beard-Miller repeat their opening round wins with Beard-Miller storming from position seven to win the final heat.

Therefore, at the completion of the heats Wormall was the top qualifier ahead of Beard-Miller, Karpenko, Porter, Ben Atkinson, Murcott, Rusty Hickman and Tim Van Ginneken and it was Van Ginneken who clean swept the series as he stormed to the Eliminator Race Wings pole position. In fact, the race for the pole position saw the current Western Australian 410ci Sprintcar Champion defeat the current 360ci Sprintcar Champion Mitch Wormall.