Wednesday June 17, 2015 at 3:36pm
The third round of this year’s ACU/FSRA British F2 Sidecar Championship heads to Castle Combe on the 27th and 28th June.
With the opening two rounds being held around two months ago a brief summary of the season so far goes as follows. Oulton Park saw a comfortable win for John Holden and Dan Sayle in race one with last year’s runners-up Alan Founds and Tom Peters in second and Conrad Harrison and Lee Patterson third. Founds pushed Holden much closer in race two but the latter won again, this time Steve and Mattie Ramsden in third. A fortnight later at Silverstone it was Holden and Founds leading the way, this time a win, a second place and 45 points apiece. The remaining podium place went to Sean Reeves and Mark Wilkes in race one and to Pete Founds and Andrew Taylor in race two.
The Holden-Founds domination is obviously reflected in the championship points with Holden on 82.5 leading Founds on 75, with Pete Founds, Ramsden and Reeves in a three-way battle for third. By coincidence, those three are also in that order in the F2 Cup championship, the separate competition for the lesser experienced teams.
Castle Combe has featured in 12 of the previous 30 runnings of the championship, the first time back in 1990, the race won by John Brindley and Chris Jones. They won the most championship races that year but were pipped for the title by Dave Saville and Paul Hutchinson, only seventh in the race here, but those points helped them to win the championship by just two points. Brindley and Jones won the British Championship the following year.
The last championship races here were in 2011 and featured two battles between the championship contenders John Holden and Andy Winkle alongside Simon Neary and Jamie Winn. Holden retired late on in the first to hand the 25 points to Neary, while he returned the compliment the following day when he went off the track. Ian and Carl Bell top scored that weekend with two second places. Neary went on to win the 2011 title while the Bells claimed it the following year.
Whatever the results are at Castle Combe, the excellent venue always provides close sidecar racing and with the best in Britain on the track, spectators are in for a treat!