Chris Voak closing in on his first century of winners

Twenty-three-year-old Chris Voak is moving inexorably towards driving 100 winners in a season for the first time and he gets a wonderful opportunity to boost his tally when he drives Motoringwiththebest in the Cyril Lilleyman Memorial Pace over 1700m at Gloucester Park on Friday night.

He will be handling the smart New Zealand-bred six-year-old for the first time for Baldivis trainer Nathan Turvey, who has driven the gelding to five wins from 14 starts in WA.

Turvey engaged Voak to make use of Voak’s junior driver concession which has enabled Motoringwiththebest, an M3-class pacer, to contest an event restricted to pacers with an assessment of M1 and M2.

Motoringwiththebest should appreciate the concession and should be able to overcome the disadvantage of starting from the outside of the front line over the sprint journey. Motoringwiththebest showed his ability as a sprinter when he raced wide early and then without cover before winning at a 1.57.6 rate from Remember El over 1700m in April.

He resumed after an absence of just over two months when he started from the 50m mark, galloped at the start and was a distant last in the middle stages before finishing solidly to be fourth behind Ledger over 2503m at Gloucester Park on Monday of last week.

Motoringwiththebest’s toughest rivals on Friday night appear to be the polemarker Elite Angel, a stylish frontrunner, and the consistent Shoab, who is well drawn as the only runner off the back line.

Voak has had a wonderful season and has driven 95 winners to be fifth on the Statewide premiership, withy Morgan Woodley (178 winners) setting the pace from Colin Brown (162) and Gary Hall jun. (150). He is in eighth place with 19 winners on the metropolitan drivers’ premiership on which Hall is leading with 102 winners from Brown (86) and Woodley (75).

Northam trainer Jesse Moore celebrated his 68^th birthday in fine style at Burwood Park on Tuesday night when his two runners, Hear No Secret and Incendio, fought out the finish of a 2190m event for mares.

Incendio, driven by Chris Voak, set the pace and looked certain of victory when she led clearly half way down the home straight. But she wilted in the closing stages and was swamped by 14/1 chance Hear No Secret (Kade Howson), who charged home from seventh at the bell and won by a half-length.