Thursday September 20, 2018 at 2:44pm
Mallory Park hosts the final round of the East Midland Racing Association championships, with almost all of the titles still to be decided at Sunday’s meeting. Two championships, the Buildbase Mallory Trophy and the EMRA 500 championship will go on until the Race of the Year next month
The Buildbase Mallory Trophy has been led by Paul Westerdale from the beginning of the series, and his lead over Curtis Wright is 55 points at present with Mikey Leeson 57 points further back, and today’s races are unlikely to settle the title with the final round at Mallory on 21st October. Wright won both races in August from Westerdale, with Mikey Leeson third just ahead of Michael Tustin in race one, while race two saw Westerdale just edge out Tustin for third place by seven hundredths of a second
It is very good news that the Complog EMRA 500 class has an extra round, because the class has provided a series of incredibly competitive races, and the August events were no different. Ben Bailey had already shown that he can take victories in the closing stages of races, but took it to a new level this time, winning both 500 races between the Devil’s Elbow and the finish line. Race one was a perfectly normal 500 race with a five-way scrap for the lead until three of them went down together at the hairpin, leaving Ben Bailey to chase Scott Adams until the final corner when he went round the outside of Adams at the Elbow to win by 0.08 seconds. The second race had an even closer finish when Bailey did exactly the same to Wayne Sutton winning by 0.029 seconds Ben now has an eight point lead over Wayne Sutton in the championship, and it is almost certain to go to the final race next month, with Shay Commins still in with a mathematical chance of the championship
Paul Westerdale has a 31 point lead over Mikey Leeson in the Tamworth Yamaha Allcomers championship, and with double points on the final two races it is certainly possible for the Kawasaki rider to make up the deficit, but Westerdale only needs to finish second twice to win the title.
The Marine Fabrications 600 class is very much closer, Curtis Wright’s double victory in August giving him a twelve point lead over Jed Bird, and Andrew Wilkinson is still very much in contention seventeen points behind Bird.
Chris Ashfield has dominated the Minitwin championship all year, and has a 98 point lead over Duane Bliss, after beating him into second place in both races in August, and Duane’s only hope of victory is to win both races with Chris failing to finish either race. The battle for second is a very different story as Ben Russell is only five points behind Bliss with Richard Saunders another ten points behind.
Roger Neep holds a twenty point lead over Andrew Bailey, who beat Neep in race two in August, but Alan Clarke is only fourteen points behind Bailey and still in with a fair chance of taking the top spot.
Lewis Jones has almost sewn up the 450 open class, Jodie Fieldhouse, who totally dominated the most recent races, being the only person with even a mathematical chance of taking the title away from Lewis
Luke Penny might have sewed up the Ducati Coventry/JHP Rookies championship had he not crashed out of the race lead in the opening race last month, giving the win to Tim Hudson. Starting at the back of the grid in race two gave Luke a big job to do and although he was through to third by lap three, Hudson was too far away to be caught, and Luke’s eventual second place leaves him 77 points up on Tim Hudson, which is going to be very difficult to catch.
Two more wins for Andy King and Andrew Sigsworth (fuelled by an early Mallory Park breakfast) have put them 81 points ahead of Shaun Chandler, and the trophy looks very likely to bear the same name yet another time.
The meeting is also the final round of the ACU 50cc championship, and the penultimate round of the Classic and Modern 50 championships. Kevin Burton has already tied up the ACU championship, but second place is currently a tie between Paul Whiting and James Widdowson with Michael Houghton a close fourth. In the Classic championship Kevin Burton has taken his Minarelli to victory in eight out of the ten races so far and holds a 44 point lead over James Widdowson (Derbi), but as there are still four races to run then James can still catch up. Michael Houghton has won every race in the air-cooled class while the “modern” ie post-1983 class has been dominated by Shane Norval on his RSK. The speed of these tiny bikes is quite remarkable, especially given that most of them are well over thirty years old, and last year we were seeing race averages of over 70mph.