Kingsley Ruddy(MSG Racing and Dyno Suzuki 1000), the 18-year-old from Hoyland, near Barnsley, won all three of the ACU Clubmans’ Championship rounds at the Derby Phoenix club’s race meeting at Croft to tighten his grip on the series.
By then, with his two closest rivals, the late Steve Hix and Ash Chivers, absent, Ruddy had stretched his lead in the series to an emphatic 185.
Before this meeting Chivers, the 23-year-old from High Wycombe, was 110 points adrift of Ruddy, but with 15 races to go and 375 points still to be won, he was still in with a chance.
Lack of cash stopped him entering this meeting, but though he will be back in action for the next round he now needs a miracle.
The first ACU Clubmans’ Championship race, run in conjunction with the club’s 751-1300cc championship, was red flagged twice.
Mike Booth (Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki 1000), the 22-year-old from Brough, Yorkshire, crashed when running up at the front, breaking a bone in his right foot and putting him in hospital overnight with concussion.
Then Liam Marchant (Kawasaki 1000) fell off when battling with Ruddy for the lead in the re-run, bringing out the red flags again.
Marchant dislocated his left thumb in the fall and then found he had broken the scaphoid in his left wrist when x-rayed at his local hospital on the Monday.
Ruddy won the race, just over a second ahead of Charlie Wilson (Honda 1000).
BSB Superstock 1000 regular Geoff Lapworth (Honda 1000) was third, just ahead of Dave Norton (Dave and Michelle Woolley Suzuki 1000), the 43-year-old from Derby having his best-ever meeting.
Ruddy won race two, with Lapworth less than a second behind him at the end of ten laps.
Scotsman Martin Jowett (BMW 1000), sixth in race one after having to start in 22nd place on the grid, was third, eight seconds further back. Wilson was fourth and Norton, fifth less than three seconds behind him.
It was wet for race three on Sunday afternoon, but it made no difference to Ruddy. Lapping eight seconds slower than the previous day, the teenager won the eight-lapper by almost ten seconds from Christian Slater (Suzuki 1000).
Another Derby racer, Carl Morris (Yamaha 1000) was a good third, with the rest of the depleted pack over 30 seconds behind the winner.
Four races later the weather was so bad racing was called off with five races still to be run, including the fourth ACU championship race.
Gary Bryan still leads the ACU FSRA F2 Sidecar championship, but now his lead is down to just three points over Ian Bell.
Bryan won the first championship race on the duly took the win with Dave Atkinson, taking his first ever podium finish, runner-up less than a second back. Conrad Harrison was third.
After surviving a big incident earlier in the race Bell drifted onto the grass on lap six. When it hit some very uneven ground the fairing was ripped in half.
In Sunday’s second race, the rain became a deluge on lap eight and within two to three minutes the track was flooded.
As the outfits began their tenth lap, the red flags came out, but nobody complained!
The result was declared on the order on lap nine.
Atkinson took his first win, an impressive 9.51 seconds ahead of the pack and also secured the Steve Norbury Trophy.
Harrison was second and Carl Fenwick joined them on the podium. Bell was fourth and Bryan sixth.
With just two rounds, four races and 100 points, to go the title placings are Bryan 153, Bell 150, Fenwick 125 and Harrison 123,