It was Queensland driver, Darren Vine from Brisbane, who led all the way to claim victory in the feature race of the Goulburn program.

During the earlier heats of the night he worked hard to perfect the setup of his car and get himself to the front of the field for the final.

It took a cool head and the ability to pick the optimum racing line for the drivers of these small but high powered open wheeler machines to maximise their performance.

In all there were 24 cars lined up behind Col Barr’s replica 1960s machine, for the parade, before the start of the feature.

Speedcars are one of the earlier forms of dirt track racing and have a proud history that dates back to the famous Sydney Showground Speedway.

On the support program there were Super Production sedans, GPs, Super Stock Rods, Juniors and series production cars.

While most of the large crowd was there to see the Australian titles for the Compact Speedcars, which came from Queensland, Victoria and NSW, there was plenty of support for the other racers.

The GPs feature race became one of attrition with the field narrowed down to just the leader before the end of the race. It seemed quite unusual to see just one car racing round the track possibly unaware that all his opposition had pulled to the infield.

He at least got to see the chequered flag as he crossed the line.

The Juniors feature was declared before the end, when a car rolled trapping its driver by the harness. Eventually the young driver was released and taken to hospital for treatment to what appeared to be relatively minor injuries.

Though there were several showers of light rain throughout the evening it seemed to have minimal affect on the track.

However according to a couple of the drivers whose championship attempts finished prematurely, there were some rough patches on the track and if they hit the wrong spot or came into the corners too fast they could easily come unstuck, as several did.

The speedcars championship race suffered numerous restarts and toward the end, with almost half the starters sitting on the infield the race was declared with the leader on the previous heat and the four other cars that followed immediately behind granted the trophies.

Danny Stainer from Greensborough Victoria finished in second spot, Rob Eyeington from NSW was third, Tony Aulsebrook from Nowra was fourth and Justin McMinn, last year’s champion was fifth.

After the race, winner Darren Vine said that it was not the way he wanted to finish the race but he was pleased with the way his car was set up and performed.

“It seems a little hollow, not actually seeing the chequered flag,” he said. “Now I know how it must have felt when the race was declared that time at Bathurst.”

He admitted that he could not see all the carnage that was going on behind him, but he knew he was being challenged by Danny Stainer and there was a really narrow line through the corners for optimum performance.

“My right hand rear tyre is completely scrubbed out,” Vine said.

“With all the yellow lights and restarts I think we must have done at least 100 laps there were more laps under the yellow than we raced and I don't know how many race laps we did."