He wasn’t the only one to suffer setbacks as Matt Riley had to run Darren Pollard’s second boat ‘Twisted’ whilst he waited for engine parts to become available. Pollard himself suffered issues throughout Saturday having just taken delivery of his rebuilt ‘Disturbed’ leaving the team no time to test and sort the engine.

Ultimately though the round was dominated by the trio that filled the top three steps of the 2021 season podium: Bastian Mullan, Matt Malthouse and 2019 Champion Kyle Elphinstone. It would be Mullan who reigned supreme, the 18-year-old topping all but one session where he failed to finish after finding the limit of grip, his advantage at the close of qualifying, an impressive 45.313, the next best, Elphinstone with a 47.230.

By finals time, Mullan turned up the wick again to card a 43.962 in the top three, Matt Malthouse second after finding almost two seconds across the three finals to defeat Elphinstone by twenty-one, one thousandth of a second.

LS-Class

1. 1A. Bastian Mullan/Tahleah James (RIPSHIFT) – 43.962
2. 69. Matt Malthouse/Leighton Collins (Nood Nutz) – 45.735
3. 219. Kyle Elphinstone/Jacob Bellamy (Blackout Racing) – 45.756

JUNIOR DEVELOPMENT

Having had to race against the clock throughout the 2021 season due to a lack of competition, reigning champion Koby Bourke (#97) had some serious opposition at Cabarita, with experienced motorsport campaigner (karts and speedway) Connor Smith (#B97) joining the ‘Lil Psycho’ team for the first time.

For Smith – who is no stranger to motorsport – the boat was a whole new experience for the 11-year-old who struggled at first with the rotation, before dialling himself in to take the fight to Bourke. The pair separated by 2.7-seconds heading into the final where Bourke stepped things up to record a 52.428 second lap, Smith’s consistency seeing him all but match his qualifying best. The pair will go at it again for round two with rumours that additional Juniors will join the field across the 2022 season.

For the Australian V8 Superboats Championship presented by Penrite Oils, teams enjoy a short break before returning to the Tweed Valley Jet Sprint Club’s Cabarita Beach facility across the August 27-28 weekend.

2022 Australian V8 Superboat Championships

Rnd#1 – Tweed Coast, NSW – 23-24 July 2022
Rnd#2 – Tweed Coast, NSW – 27-28 August 2022
Rnd#3 – Keith, SA – 8 October 2022
Rnd#4 – Temora, NSW – 5 November 2022 (Colin Parish Memorial)
Rnd#5 – Temora, NSW – 3 December 2022
Rnd#6 – Griffith, NSW – 11 February 2023
Rnd#7 [FINAL] – Keith, SA – 25 March 2023

Ultimately, some teams – notably Jody Ely (#33), Brendan Doyle (#4), Brett Thornton (#53), Danny Knappick (#45) and Daniel Warburton (#81) – elected to run their 2021 packages, whilst reigning champion Justin Roylance (#67) went with cast heads, methanol injection.

Discussions pre-season saw a decision to take a vote on whether the new systems would be included within the outright 400-Class points, or whether those teams would contest a separate point score, a vote amongst competing teams on Saturday night seeing the majority call for all boats to be included in the outright points as performance differences were not judged to be a factor. Post-event however a decision was made to call the result provisional until all stakeholders (including those not present) were consulted, so at this stage, the result remains unofficial.

Not surprisingly, the season started much the way the 2021 season closed – with arch-rivals (and great mates), Jody Ely and Justin Roylance going head-to-head, before Roylance was side-lined late on Saturday with issues with his new system.

Methanol burning in the exhaust pipes at low revs melted data lines in the back of the boat, a hasty welding job in Sam Everingham’s nearby workshop extending the tailpipes beyond the top of the boat to allow the team to carry on into Sunday’s finals.

Sunday morning saw Roylance return to the top of the timesheets, his 44.481 ultimately the fastest of the day, Ely half a second shy with Brett Thornton and Brendan Doyle (#4) battling over the final place on the podium ahead of Thornton’s Q5 retirement.

With just six boats remaining, the first elimination final was dropped, teams instead going into the final six battling to make it into the final.

Daniel Warburton carded his best run of the weekend, with Danny Knappick (#45) showing ongoing signs of his improvement – the benefit of more miles under his belt since the June 2021 event – the former ski racing competitor finding four and a half seconds over his June best to join Ely, Roylance and Doyle in the final, officials extending the final to four boats to allow both 400-Class variants an opportunity to score points ahead of a final decision on the category’s future.

In the first elimination final Roylance grabbed too much bank and then suffered with a clogged jet unit in the final.

Ely was the last boat out, Roylance had posted a 44.864 to Doyle’s 47.345 and Knappick’s 49.295. It was Ely though who produced another stunning lap on a rotation that clearly suits his ‘Jetspeed’ hull, his 44.653 was a full half second faster than his June 2021 lap to put him two tenths clear of his rival and onto the top step of the podium.

2022 Australian V8 Superboat Championships

Rnd#1 – Tweed Coast, NSW – 23-24 July 2022
Rnd#2 – Tweed Coast, NSW – 27-28 August 2022
Rnd#3 – Keith, SA – 8 October 2022
Rnd#4 – Temora, NSW – 5 November 2022 (Colin Parish Memorial)
Rnd#5 – Temora, NSW – 3 December 2022
Rnd#6 – Griffith, NSW – 11 February 2023
Rnd#7 [FINAL] – Keith, SA – 25 March 2023

Perhaps the most frustrating element of Stanley’s announcement was that we would never get to see a head-to-head fight between the man billed as the ‘fastest in the world’ and eight-time Australian Champion Phonsy Mullan.

Coming to Cabarita though, a repeat rotation gave teams an opportunity to gauge themselves against a known rotation, organisers choosing to adopt the very same navigation that was used during the third round of the 2021 season last June. The Unlimited benchmark at that event, Slade Stanley with a 41.108, a time he set in the opening elimination final before inverting the ‘Hazardous’ machine next time out – whether he would have improved that mark, we will never know, although he conceded that he was often at the limit of the boat, so it was certainly a mark to chase.

Not surprisingly, Mullan was intent on breaking that mark, turning in some stunning laps to ultimately improve it in the second qualifier, then break into the 40s the next time out. From that point on it was all about improving the setup of his ‘PULSE’ hull, before finishing with a flourish, his 40.253 in the final – a full three seconds faster than his June 2021 time – a statement that the reigning World Champion had finally returned to the throne.

With Mullan stepping up to fill the seat vacated by Stanley, teams now had a new benchmark to chase, but with little changing for any of his rivals, improvements over their last run at Cabarita on the same venue were always going to be incremental. That said, Daryl Hutton (#28) and Scott Krause (#37) both found wholesale improvement, Hutton improving to a 42.927 in the fourth qualifier after battling boost issues early, whilst Krause also found almost a second on his 2021 best, to card a 43.766 in the final qualifier.

Whilst the ‘usual contenders’ were vying for a position on the podium alongside Mullan, perhaps the greatest threat was former Unlimited race winner Tremayne Jukes (#214). Initially slated as Driver Coach for Brendan Doyle and the ‘Girlfriend’ team, Jukes found himself in the driver’s seat on Saturday morning after the boat’s original pilot Paul Gaston failed to make clearance with the specified distance between the top of his helmet and the roll cage.

Originally scheduled to play a part of the new 400-Class methanol development project, the ‘PULSE” team elected instead to enter Jukes in Unlimited to see how the new engine package shaped up, the alloy heads and methanol injection system powering the Victorian to the third fastest time at the close of the opening elimination final, his 44.018 slotting him in behind Mullan and Hutton, before a setback in the Top 6.

Running on a pace that would have seen him on the podium, Jukes was shaving millimetres off every bank to make up for his performance deficit before grabbing just a little too much mid run, his pirouette off an island now the stuff of legend, the boat spinning a full 360 degrees to land back in the water where Jukes kept the boot in to continue his rotation. The only setback.. the contact had thrown him off navigation, so he was forced to complete one part of the circuit again and right the wrong, but sadly, that put the clock against him.

All the while this was falling into the hands of Cabarita regular Glenn ‘Spider’ Roberts (#888). The ‘Blown Budget’ driver had arrived in the region some days ahead of the round to finalise work on his 632 cubic-inch big block to be fully prepared for the season, but early in the event he suffered a DNF, with a rocker arm issue forcing a hasty overnight rebuild at the track Saturday night, assisted by rivals Daryl Hutton and Scott Krause. By Sunday morning he was finally able to card a time, then maintain his pace into the final six, where he stepped things up to a 46.937 to qualify for the final alongside Mullan and Krause after the setbacks suffered by Edmonds, Hutton, Coley, and Jukes in the second elimination final, the Unlimited veteran carding a safe 49.831 to make a popular return to the Cabarita final.

No-one though could touch Mullan, his final lap one of the best you’ll see, whilst for Krause, his consistency saw him claim second and a strong haul of championship points, Roberts, Jukes, Coley, Hutton, and Edmonds completing the championship order.

All photographs; Russell Puckeridge, Pureart Creative Images.

2022 Australian V8 Superboat Championships

Rnd#1 – Tweed Coast, NSW – 23-24 July 2022
Rnd#2 – Tweed Coast, NSW – 27-28 August 2022
Rnd#3 – Keith, SA – 8 October 2022
Rnd#4 – Temora, NSW – 5 November 2022 (Colin Parish Memorial)
Rnd#5 – Temora, NSW – 3 December 2022
Rnd#6 – Griffith, NSW – 11 February 2023
Rnd#7 [FINAL] – Keith, SA – 25 March 2023