Rankin, 20, is a surprise contender for series honours after finishing runner-up in round one at Hamilton’s Western Speedway on Saturday night.

He finished behind Whyalla’s Angelo Karoussis in the 20-lap final but beat home a host of big names, including Bannockburn’s James Aranyosi who ran third.

Karoussis leads the series standings with 153 points but has not nominated for all six rounds.

Aranyosi is second on 146 points, thanks to better heat results than Rankin, who is sitting third with 145.

Rankin said he was making ground on Karoussis in the closing stages but kept getting stuck in lapped traffic and “unfortunately we just ran out of laps”.

He was pleased to post back-to-back solid results, having almost made the podium in the Jack Willsher Cup at Premier Speedway seven days earlier.

“We came into it on a massive run of bad luck. It only turned around last week at the Jack Willsher, where we got fifth out of the 39 there.

“Last night was a shock. Coming off the Jack Willsher, we thought that was a good run but we got luck. But we backed it up for the first round of Speedweek.”

Rankin, the cousin of Simpson sprintcar driver Tim Rankin, said the return to form was a case of “just getting our heads around the car more than anything”.

“I was pretty down coming into the Jack Willsher and Speedweek,” he said.

“Now these two results have come in, the confidence is starting to get up. But we’re not getting ahead of ourselves.”

Rankin placed fourth in his two heats to start the A main out of position four. Karoussis had pole position, with Aranyosi joining him on the front row.

Warrnambool’s Dylan Willsher was out of position three but had a slider on his top wing break with six laps to go and finished eighth.

Drivers who failed to finish included Steph Munn and Andrew Rae, who were involved in a spectacular crash on the second lap.

Speedweek continues tonight at Darlington’s Mid-Western Speedway, where $5000 is up for grabs as part of the Stony Point 5000.

Mid-Western Speedway president Rikki Stewart said the club was “planning for it to be one of the biggest events we’ve had”.

“Last year at the May race meeting we had in excess of 140 cars. In crowd numbers, this will hopefully be just as big,” he said.

“The Jack Willsher Cup is the prestigious race in Victoria. We want to make the Stony Point 5000 as prestigious as that. Our aim is to make Darlington the home of formula 500 racing. Laang Speedway was the creator of the class.

“They will always have prestige around Laang. But as soon as someone mentions formula 500s, we want them to think of Darlington.”

Junior sedans, which will contest the Foxy Memorial, and super rods are also in action at Darlington, with nominations strong in both classes.

The club will also host a car demonstration on the Warrnambool civic green today, from 10am.