After traveling through the Northeast States of Maine, Pennsylvania (twice), Connecticut, and New York, the drivers in the Mike Cook Northeast Challenge Series arrived in Kingston, New Hampshire for the final event of the tour. Coming off of his impressive two win performance the previous week at the Crystal Lake, New York showdown, young gun Iron Mike Akerstrom took a four point lead over Steve Noury into the final weekend. Noury had a disappointing outing in New York and during the course of the week turned to the Chief Mechanic of the U.S. A-Team for some engine tuning.

Wild Bill Forster returned to the series ranked one point ahead of New Hampshire’s Tim Noury and ten points to the good over Canada’s Michael Rorke. Lewiston, Maine’s Thom Noury rounded out the starting lineup.

Heat one saw all of the boats make a legal start with Forster taking the first turn first with S. Noury in tow. As they headed up the backstretch the red flag flew with a boat upside down in turn one – it was Akerstrom! The field headed to the pits for refueling as Akerstrom was towed in. As the drivers headed to the milling area, Akerstrom’s crew worked feverishly to get him ready for the second heat. On the restart it was S. Noury, Rorke, T. Noury, Th. Noury and Forster to turn one. With Akerstrom on the beach this was S. Noury’s opportunity to capitalize and he powered his Bennett craft to a half lap lead only to discover that he had jumped the gun! In fact, Forster was the only legal boat at the finish thereby giving him a lock on the overall win with the simple task of finishing heat two.

With Foster playing it conservatively, it came down to the young gun Akerstrom, who will be graduating from college into the real world in just two short years, against the old veteran Noury who will be collecting social security in two months. Noury won the drag race to turn one and jumped out to an early lead. Akerstrom was second, Forster cruised in third while Tim Noury and Rorke were in their own battle for fourth and fifth in the series. Noury held on and beat Akerstrom to the checkers by a boat length for the heat win and a bonus point. Foster took the overall win and clinched third in the series. By placing a position ahead of Akerstrom and with the heat win bonus point, Noury climbed to within one point of the series leader setting the stage for the race #12 finale of the series.

As part of the three day in two racing at the Kingston Fall Classic, the second race on Saturday was a one heat event. After 22 heats of racing within the series it simply came down to whoever finished highest between Akerstrom and S. Noury would be the Series Champion. At the start it was the 4CE of Rorke to cross the starting line first but it was Noury and Akerstrom who were the first legal starters. As they had throughout the weekend they ran side by side for two laps until Iron Mike pulled ahead on lap three and led to the finish. With the win Akerstrom took the title, $750 in cash, $300 in merchandise awards and the big Happy Gilmore sized check. Upon congratulating Akerstrom on the win Noury commented “How cool was that to have the red, white and blue 6A win it all in the Memorial Series. At times I felt like I was racing Cookie and Iron Mike did an awesome job of driving.”

Rounding out the top five were Wild Bill Forster, Tim Noury and Michael Rorke. It was quite a Series.