HAWKESBURY sprintcar driver Mick Saller’s season is about to end this weekend, but he has already capped it off in a fantastic way by claiming his first victory after four seasons of racing sprintcars.
Saller was ecstatic with his maiden victory in the series, which happened in Brisbane in April.
The triumph was surrounded by a number of strong performances during the second half of the World Sprintcar Series Championship season.
“On crossing the finish line, I honestly didn’t care about prize money or the trophy, I just wanted to enjoy the moment,” Saller said of his feelings after going past the chequered flag in first place.
“Once I actually got into the lead, I just needed to keep reminding myself that I can stay there.
“Being able to reward mum and dad, the rest of the team and the sponsors with this win is just an amazing feeling after all of the hard work and support they’ve put in.”
The 21-year-old Saller got a jump on pole sitter Lachlan McHugh in his feature race victory, taking the lead from the opening lap of the race.
McHugh made an aggressive move during the race, trying to go around the outside to overtake Saller, but McHugh ended up spinning.
Another rival, Mitchell Gee, actually stole the lead from Saller in the closing stages of the race, but Saller managed to wrest the race back in his favour on the same lap.
It was not always an easy season for Saller and his team either.
Two weeks before the victory, Saller had crashed and wrecked the car, and the team had a mammoth effort to rebuild it in time for the drive to Queensland.
It was also his first in the World Sprintcar Series Championship, and proved to be trying at times, and not just because some of Australia’s best racing drivers are in it.
The sprintcar championship has rounds hosted all over Australia, and Saller and his team were on the road a lot.
Saller said the long trips drained the energy and morale of the team in the opening part of the season, and it led to some poor finishes, which doubled the disappointment.
Thankfully, some positive results later in the year helped perk the team up and saw the spirit return.
“We felt that we were almost at rock bottom after the beginning of the season,” he said.
“We all just persisted and kept trying to lift out motivation, then when we started to qualify for feature races, we began getting our confidence back.”
The 2017-18 season was the fourth for Saller behind the wheel of a sprintcar.