Orange Retro Festival – KartSportNews

from Kev ‘The Noise’ Davies

It was a two-for-the-price-of-one weekend at Orange, the Karting NSW Kart Festival running combined with Retro Karting Australia’s annual Tony Agland Memorial meeting.

The KNSW Kart Festival saw Rookies, Novices, Junior Light & Heavy, TaG Restricted Light and Senior Performance competitors taking to the track for an Orange Kart Club 2024 Championship round. There was also a display from a few vintage karts.

But the main reason for being at Orange last weekend was to see the three Clubman classes battling it out for the Tony Agland Memorial event. Some amazing races were witnessed in all three retro classes. Mickey Riley got victory in Pro Clubman Light, Stephen Roffe got victory in Pro Clubman Heavy and Brent Dickson took the win in Pro Clubman Super Heavy.

Despite no F100s contesting the event, Nick Agland was on hand to unveil the “Tony Agland Chase”

scroll to the bottom for photo gallery
full results on Speedhive HERE
more race videos on The Noise YouTube HERE
more photos on Kev’s Facebook HERE

As part of the KNSW Festival of Karting, the fireworks were 30 minutes long! The rest of the fireworks were most certainly on track.

Chris Sandrone received a penalty in heat 3 meaning a rear of grid start position but he still managed to climb all the way back to 4th in the Clubman Light class. Disaster struck Mitchel Martin from an almost certain podium position when his kart stopped at the Jackson by Design hairpin. Mitchell Croke having been quick all weekend got his reward with a great second place finish and seemingly from nowhere Sean Atherton (6 kilos over weight and mechanical problems in the pre final) still managed a great 3rd place.

Queenslander Rudy Farkas had a very up and down weekend but the introduction of new tyres for qualifying somehow upset the balance of the kart and it was a struggle from there. It was the final where his time to shine came and a great 8-lap battle with the very consistent Anthony Sutej was a treat to watch! Rudy finished 4th and even more amazing was Anthony got the job done using his brother’s chassis, Andrej giving it up for his brother’s cause. James Taylor did a fantastic job to grab second but as we’ve already mentioned Stephen Roffe was in a class of his own!

The on-track battle in the Super Heavies everyone wanted to see was Straughney V Brucey! Bruce Otter took off in pursuit of the front two, Dickson and Woodward never to be seen again by Straughny because he was in a massive battle with Choppy (Keith Ford), Ryan Portelli, Jackson & Rusty! Once again Super Heavies were a treat to watch but an absolute highlight in heat 3 for these guys was Kurt Woodward at speed going into MG Tire side-by-side with Brent Dickson and waving at him, the response from Brent at some 70-80kph approaching a very tight kink left then right was to wave back! Everyone was on the edge of their seat for that one!!