It’s been a busy few months at Rowe Racing HQ, having competed in Round 4 of the Australian Sidecar Championships at Sydney Motorsport Park in August, then recently heading to Mount Gambier for the annual Master of Mac Park meeting.

Being Royce’s second visit to the old Eastern Creek, and Leonard’s first, the lads were keen to hit the ground running and post some decent times. Thanks to the rain holding off, which had battered Sydney all week, they managed to get their times down to within a few seconds of the leaders.

Still struggling to get off the line smoothly, our starts put us behind the 8-ball from turn one. After a few laps, clawing back positions, we managed to keep Mick Alton/Dave Rumble in our sights but not quite find the pace to take the lead at any point.

There was some great dicing with a couple of the F1 racers on their way through the pack and overall we finished second. Which also landed us second in the NSW Sidecar Championship! Plus, we managed to take home the Best Presented trophy, which is the second time we’ve managed that this year!

From there it was onwards to Mount Gambier for the 2025 Master of Mac Park over the September AFL grand final weekend. The weather had been average all week, so we were lucky to see blue skies all day Sunday and only a few light showers on the Saturday – one of which came down right as we pushed out for qualifying!

Our first race was ended before even completing a lap sadly, as a simple electrical issue caused us to lose power going down the straight. Luckily we could safely pull into the in-field and eventually work out which plug needed to be held together to get going again! The next two races saw some great dicing and an attempt to chase down Jones/Budarick but after some average starts and similar times to the leaders, we couldn’t claw back any distance.

The Master of Mac Park race comes down to the final race of the day, so we threw everything at it, getting down to a new PB of 1m18.3s and taking the lead on the final lap after some pretty intense racing.

We had a great time pitting in the new sheds, with campers all around us. It all adds to the great vibe that Mac Park provides. The presentations were well attended and luckily the bar was well stocked given the length of Leonard’s speech. The lads enjoyed themselves with a beer out the cup and posing for photos in front of the famous honour board, it was genuinely a special moment to know the Rowe name is going up there forever.

After recovering from the greasy roadhouse KFC (Keith’s Fried Chicken) on the drive back to Adelaide, Royce had this to say:

“We had a reasonably good weekend in Eastern Creek getting our times down to a personal best and nearly catching Mick in one race. Playing around with the clutch all weekend didn’t help the starts but we treated it as a learning weekend.

“Coming into Master of Mac Park, knowing it’s quite a physically demanding track, Leonard had been working hard in the gym and I had been working hard on the gin.

“It’s been a big goal of ours to get our names up on the Master of Mac board together since we were kids, so we were focused on making the last race of the day our best.

“Lapping similar times to Stephen and Jay all weekend, which was already personal best lap times for us at Mac Park, after a bad start in the feature race we had to pull our finger out to catch them. We ended up doing a personal best lap time and caught up to Jones on the last lap.

“After some paint swapping around old turn 1 and 2 which made for some great go-pro footage, we managed to seal the deal with a couple corners to spare. Which was a great end to the weekend and has really geared us up coming into the last round of the Australian Titles in Perth. Watching plenty of on-board laps to learn the Wanneroo track now!”

In other exciting news, we were recently asked to jump on the Aussie Sidecar Stories podcast! It’s a podcast that has only just started this year, having hosted some big names from classic sidecars, dirt, past legends and plenty of others. So if you’re keen to hear two blokes ramble on about a sport they’re only just getting to grips with, find it on Spotify, Apple Music or wherever you listen to your podcasts when uploaded in the coming weeks!

We now look ahead to Perth for the final round of the Championship. Neither Royce or Leonard have been to Wanneroo (or Carco.com Raceway as it’s now called), so it’ll mean plenty of practice laps to hopefully be up to speed by race one. Although unlikely, it is mathematically possible we could bridge the points gap from second to first overall thanks to the double points being awarded for race wins as it’s the final round… let’s goooo!