Back in July Leon Jeacock, Richard Cooper, Danny Kent and Charlie Nesbitt brought us some of the best racing of the year with the four of them covered by two-thirds of a second after ten laps of place-swapping round the Mallory track.(Attached photo was taken on the last lap, but doesn’t reflect the final order) Those four riders return for the Race of the Year on Sunday at Mallory Park, with the addition of Christian Iddon on the Buildbase Suzuki, Bjorn Estment, Shaun Anderson and former national Superstock 600 champion Luke Hedger all on 1000 Suzukis, Ash Beech on a Superstock Honda, Rhys Irwin on the 675 Triumph on which he has scored points in every round of this years national Supersport championship, Peter Ward on a similar Triumph, together with EMRA regulars Ashley King, Mikey Leeson and Ryan Oliver. Cooper is perhaps the rider in form, having won the Stars at Darley two weeks ago, and, by way of a change, taking a one-off ride in the Supersport championship and taking a second and a third on a bike he hadn’t previously raced. Former Moto 3 champion Nesbitt, having been on the podium five times this year on a Superstock bike stepped up to BSB for the last couple of rounds getting in the points in five out of his six races, while Beech and Hedger have been consistent scorers in the Superstock championship while Kent is a former world champion. Twenty laps round Mallory should be enough to provide a spectacular finish to the 2022 racing season.
There are also sixteen ten-lap races to decide the EMRA championships, with titles at stake in almost every one, The anticipated battle in the Mallory Trophy and Allcomers events came to a very early end at the September meeting when Ashley King only completed one qualifying lap before putting himself out of the meeting. Without Ashley to challenge him, Mikey Leeson was able to win both races in both classes, albeit with a steadily increasing amount of pressure from Ryan Oliver, whose challenge grew stronger with each race, swapping places with Leeson for the first eight laps of the final Mallory Trophy race. Leeson now holds a thirty-five point lead over Ashley King in the Mallory Trophy championship, but with 100 points to race for today Ashley is still in with a chance if he can win both races. The Allcomers championship could hardly be closer, with Mikey just a single point ahead of Ashley, and whoever gets the best results on the day will take the Allcomers title.
Almost as close as the Allcomers title chase is the Rookies 600 championship, where Kyle Abell had an unbroken sequence of wins until his crash at the August meeting, since when the advantage has gone to Liam Price, whose double victory in September over Kyle has put Price two points ahead. Chris Taylor won the 1000 class in both races ahead of championship leader David Kortegas, who still has a 72 point lead going into the last round.
George Bedford didn’t appear until the third round of the championship, when he made an instant impact with four wins from four starts. In the 450 class the only rider who has beaten him was Charlie Atkins, who has just taken third place in the national Junior Supersport series, and George has a six point advantage over Freddie Oakley at the start of today’s events. In the open 500 class George has won the last six races, and holds a fifteen point advantage over John McLaren, but his winning run may be challenged by last year’s champion Marcus Tatchell making his first EMRA appearance this year. Harrison Dessoy, sixth in the British Talent Cup with a win at Oulton and eight top-five finishes across the BTC season should also be a strong contender for victory in the class.
The most consistently close racing all season has been in the CB500 class with five different race winners. Liam Sylvain has won the last four races, but only made his first appearance in the two-day August meeting and stands 85 points behind the championship leader Owen Monaghan. Owen has won three races this year, and has scored points in every race, which has given him a 13 point lead over Terry Allsopp, who has had two wins this year, as have the two Darrens, Faulkner and Conneelly.