Lee Wilson (MSG Suzuki 1000) climbed back to the top of both the ACU Clubmans Championship and the Derby Phoenix clubs 751-1300cc Four stroke series after notching up two wins and two thirds in the fourth round of the two competitions at Croft on August 17 and 18.
Those results points took him to 279 for the year, 20 ahead of Jamie Harrison (Honda 1000), who is up to second in the standings and 32 clear of Carl Simpson (BMW 1000), who had led the championships coming into the meeting.
Both Harrison and Simpson each had one bad result in race two, denting their championship ambitions. Simpson crashed out of that race, on the last lap in the rain, when leading by 20 seconds.
That gifted victory to Daniel Chappell (Honda 1000), who had been fourth in race one. Novice Shaun Neath (Suzuki 1000) nipped past
Wilson in the closing stages snatching second spot by just two fifths of a second.
Both Simpson and Wilson had elected to run full wets and were proved right when the heavens opened just before the start. Harrison however had gone for intermediates and limped home in seventh place
Race three was red-flagged after Liam Marchant (Kawasaki 1000) crashed, breaking his collarbone and fracturing some ribs.
Wilson won the five-lap re-start, with Harrison bouncing back to form taking second place, three fifths of a second in front of teenager, Kingsley Ruddy (BMW 1000), the reigning ACU Clubmans champion.
With time running out the final race was cut to four laps and narrowly won by Ruddy from Harrison, but Wilson, in third place, was closing fast.
Simpson was fourth.
Stuart Martin stayed on top of the Derby Phoenix club’s Formula 600 championship standings after four tough races, but his closest rival, Lee Wells has cut his lead down from 39 points to 19.
Martin, the younger brother of Guy Martin, notched up a third in the opener, finishing nine seconds behind the battling Wells and Stephen Parsons in an all-Triumph 675 top three.
Conditions were damp for race two, with lap times five seconds slower, but they suited Scotsman Chris Cook (Kawasaki), who had been only seventh in the opener. He ran home a clear winner.
Wells, the 32-year-old from Lincolnshire, was second, a fifth of a second ahead of Adrian Kershaw (Kawasaki). It was a bad race for Martin, who was seventh over the line, almost 17 seconds down on the winner at the end of the seven lap race.
Conditions were good the following day and now Wayne Humble (Yamaha), the man who leads the Michelin Power Cup 600 series, came into his own. The 24-year-old from Cumbria won both races.
He beat the on-form Cook by just under a second in the first, with Wells third less than a second further back and Martin fourth, just over six seconds further back.
Humble won the five lap sprint at the end of the afternoon, heading home a six rider convoy, made up of Kershaw, Cook, Martin, Parsons, Wells and Stuart Haslam (Yamaha) by over three seconds.
Haslam, despite a disappointing weekend, stays third in the standings, but he is now 65 down on Martin, Robert Mack (Kawasaki 650) had his worst meeting of the year, struggling for points in a full grid boosted by the appearance of local stars, but he hung onto his lead in the Mini Thunderbikes championship.
His friend and closest rival, Stephen Tweddle (Suzuki 650), on the other hand, scored well, including to fourth places and so cut Mack’s lead from 28 points to just one.
Paul Ellerker (Kawasaki) made his first appearance of the season in the Formula 400 championship and proved to be in a class of his own, winning all four races.
Callum Ward (Suzuki 250) was the man who followed Ellerker home in the first three outings and those results catapulted the 19-year-old from Hull to the top of the points’ table.
He went from trailing the absent Dan Williams by 11 points to leading the series by 49.
Ward could have ended the weekend with an even greater advantage, but for a crash in the final race.