ENZED Drivers Championship frontrunner, David Sieders, suffered a major blow to his series chances when a CAMS Appeal Tribunal dismissed his appeal against a 35 series point deduction, following his role in a major crash during Race 3, Round 7 of the Auto One V8 Utes Racing Series – protected by ARMOR ALL on the Gold Coast last month. CAMS stewards not only dismissed the appeal, they also ruled the original judicial decision was too lenient, and doubled the penalty to 70 series points.
The Sydney driver was charged with failing to re-join the track safely after contact with Wayne Wakefield’s Ford, which triggered a high speed major incident in which the Sieders Ute, Adam Marjoram’s Auto One Holden and Cam Wilson’s Ford all were written off.
Wilson has suffered on going minor injuries since the crash.
Nathan Pretty also walked away from a judicial hearing in Melbourne last night (Tuesday, 19th November) disappointed. Murphy Motorsport had appealed the decision to exclude Pretty’s Holden from Qualifying at the Bathurst round, after being 1 kilo underweight in post qualifying inspections, forcing the Melbourne driver to lose series points from qualifying and start from the rear of the grid.
He remains in third position in the Championship, only 2 points behind Rhys McNally in second. Sieders has now moved back to fourth position.
“I’m not happy with the outcome I don’t believe anyone should be fighting in those conditions in a steward’s room, it should be on the track. We’re just going to focus on Homebush now, try and win the round and have 5 wins for the year. We are going to put the pressure on Ryal (Harris) and go there with a good game plan, get out in front and try and dominate as best we can; we had a good car setup there last year so we are hoping for a good result,” said Pretty.
Ryal Harris is still in the lead of the championship, 41 points in front of Pretty, and with 140 points still up for grabs; six drivers can technically win the series. The reigning champ is currently in Las Vegas on promotion duties for major sponsor TapOut, and was wrapt with the result. “That’s great news! The more I have looked at the footage, the more you realize what a massive mistake it was on his (David’s) behalf, and as a good friend of Wayne Wakefield, I was a little peeved off he was blaming him after the race! As far as Nathan going underweight, I would be extremely disappointed if he got away with it!” said Harris.
Sieders was unavailable for comment.
The ENZED Drivers Championship will be decided in a few weeks’ time when the drivers hit the track for the final round of the 2013 Auto One V8 Ute Racing Series – protected by ARMOR ALL 6 – 8 December at the Sydney 500.
