Monday September 21, 2015 at 2:16pm
Lincolnshire racer, Aaron Clarke, had the best meeting of his short, three-year career, at this Derby Phoenix weekend meeting at Cadwell Park.
The 19-year-old apprentice plumber, from Kirton, near Boston, won the first two of three Allcomers events and was third in his class and sixth overall in the other on his Kawasaki 600 after running off the track three laps from home.
Clarke was third home in the first three Formula 600 races and runner-up in the final one.
Tom Neave (Kawasaki) was the man Clarke could not beat in the 600 events. The 20-year-old farmer from Saxby, Lincs won all four outings.
In the first race Tom beat his twin brother, Tim and Clarke by just over two seconds in an all-Kawasaki battle.
Fourth home was Ron Haslam’s nephew, Stuart Haslam (Yamaha).
Tom Neave won race two. A couple of seconds behind were brother Tim, Clarke and Haslam, all covered by only 1.7 seconds.
Neave completed his hat trick on Sunday morning, but Tim Neave was only two fifths of a second behind and Clarke was a fifth of a second down on him.
Neave made it a clean sweep in race four, but only three fifths of a second ahead of Clarke. Tim Neave was third, a couple of seconds further back.
It was the best ever weekend for the Neave brothers, boosted by suspension advice from Adam Marshall.
Ross Walker (Yamaha), the F600 championship leader, was very much an also-ran picking up only 18 points all weekend. He still tops the points’ table on 143, with Rick Saville second with 121 and Tom Neave now third on 100.
Guy Martin was at the meeting. Not to race, but watch his younger brother, Stuart in action.
Stuart, on his Kawasaki 1000, had raced at only three previous meetings this season and so was far from race fit.
But was not his lack of racing action that made it a tough meeting for him, but a grabbing clutch that made it impossible to get a good start in any of the three Allcomers races or four 1300cc Four-stroke events.
In the first 1300 outing he had climbed rapidly to third after a poor getaway, but slipped back to eventually finish fifth.
Matt Stevenson (BMW 1000) was the winner, but less than a fifth of a second from the similarly mounted Julian Gaunt.
Kingsley Ruddy (Kawasaki 1000) was down in eighth place on the opening lap, but battled through to third, setting the fastest lap.
Martin led for most of the race but on lap seven of eight, Ruddy went ahead to take victory by just over a quarter of a second, again setting the fastest lap.
Adam Reavill (Kawasaki 1000) won race three, on Sunday morning, just over five seconds ahead of Stephen Parsons, on his big Kawasaki.
Martin was right with the leader throughout the race, but was pushed back to third after being given a ten-second penalty for jumping the start, caused by him being over-eager not to suffer at the start.
Parsons won race four by over eight seconds from Reavill, with Ruddy third, just a fraction of a second further back.
Martin fourth after suffering from a mystery lack of power, discovered he had accidentally knocked a switch.
With just three races to go in the final round at Donington, Parsons, on 300 points, cannot now be caught by his closest rival, Stevenson, who is 87 behind.
Aaron Clarke beat Martin home by over eight in the first Allcomers race, after Martin had been down in sixth place at the end of the first of ten laps.
Ruddy was third overall and second 1000cc machine over the line with Stuart Haslam next, the second 600. Martin and Clarke shared the fastest lap
Clarke won race two, passing Martin two laps from home and opening up a three second advantage. Martin again, though, setting the fastest lap
Tom and Tim Neave were third and fourth.
Martin crashed out, uninjured, at the Mountain in the third race when lying third. Clarke was in a three way battle for second, third and fourth places when he ran off the track on lap seven, dropping back to sixth.
Tom Neave led from start to finish, beating Stephen Parsons by over 14 seconds. Tim Neave was third just over a second further back.
Karl Foster (Yamaha 600) held a massive 131 point lead over his closest rival in the Pre-Injection class, coming into this meeting, but with 200 points to be won here and the final round of the series at Donington in October he could not yet start to celebrate.
But with three wins and a second place over the two-days the title went to the 38-year-old steel worker.
His closest rival, his 35-year-old brother, Mark Foster took a second and three thirds from his four rides to make certain of runner-up spot in the series.
The Steel Frame 600s were running alongside the Pre-Injections.
Paul Simkiss notched up enough points in the overall standings to climb to third in the Pre-Injection and at the same time moved a lot closer to taking the Steel Frame title.
Simkiss took a win, two seconds and a third in his four races, taking his tally for the season to 408 points, increasing his lead over Jon Dunn who finished third twice and fourth in the two other races, from 16 points to 38.
Andrew Carden had already won the Derby Phoenix club’s Formula 400 title before this meeting, so three victories for Ryan Varley and one to Will Leaning made no difference to the outcome.
A clean sweep of the weekend’s four races gave Daniel Taylor both the Stock Twins and Mini Thunderbike club titles in both series from Neil Schofield.
Father and son, Gary and Daryl Gibson (Suzuki 600) won three of the four sidecar races and were second home in the other, seven seconds behind Lewis Blacklock/Paddy Rusney (Suzuki).
It was all too late to stop another father and so partnership, John and James Saunders (Honda 600) winning the club championship, though.
John, 48 and 19-year-old James, in their second season of racing, had 301 points, 99 more than Brian Alflatt/Aaron Galligan/Aaron Gorman (Baker 600).
This was the fifth of the six round Derby Phoenix club’s season-long championship, but the first meeting of the year that the club had organised the event.
In addition to a crowded programme of their own club championships, there were four more competitive classes to complete the weekend.
Bill Callister (Honda 1000) was in good form in the GB Racing Inter Services races. He won the first by just under two seconds from Alistair Wright (Yamaha 600), was second home to Paul Cunvin (Honda 600) by a similar margin in race two, before winning the third race by just over a second from Cunvin and taking runner-up spot in the class in the fourth outing behind Cunvin.
Paul Fyson (Yamaha 250) wrapped up the 250 Two Stroke GP title with one meeting to go, after finishing runner up in all four races at this seventh and penultimate round of the competition
The only man who could have taken the championship battle to the final round at Donington, Gordon Dorset, crashed out of the first, hurting his hand and putting him out of the rest of the meeting.
Fyson, a 29-year-old x-ray service engineer from Biggleswade, Beds, was keen to give the credit for his title to Peter and Chrissie Thorne, who supplied the bike he races.
Dean Stimpson was the star of the class, winning all four races, but having missed several rounds of the series, out of contention.
Mark Cox won the first two Ducati Desmo Due championship races on the Saturday, with Dallas Hornblow winning both races on the Sunday.
Cox was less than a second ahead of Rob Norman in race one, but a clear seven seconds ahead of Hornblow, who had been fifth in race one, next time out. Norman was third.
Hornblow was just under three seconds in front of Andrew Claridge in race three, with Matthew Lawson half a second further back.
Hornblow was a clear five seconds clear of Andy Blomfield in race four, with Paul Payne a fraction of a second behind Blomfield.
To complete a wide ranging programme, there were even two Moto E races!
Kieran Rowe (Sietta Agni) won the first race by nearly nine seconds from Chris Foster (Darvill).
Daley Mathison (UoN) set the fastest lap, but failed to finish the four-lap race.
Ho Chi Fung (Zongshen) won the second, ten-lap race, heading home Rowe by over eight seconds. Foster was third.