The third round of the Maxxis ACU British Sidecar Cross Championship was held at the Foxhill circuit near Swindon, hosted by the Nora-MX club.
With over thirty crews entered and the weather looking reasonable the sizeable crowd were looking forward to the three races with points to be gained in the Maxxis championship class and the Experts class for riders with a riding number higher than ten.
In timed training series leaders Stuart Brown / Joe Millard set the fastest time over three seconds faster than Brett Wilkinson / Dan Chamberlain with the Irish team of Neil Campbell / Craig Parmenter in third. Wilkinson’s performance was even more remarkable considering it is only two weeks since he broke his collarbone in Latvia! One casualty in this session was Dan Foden and his passenger Scott Grahame who crashed heavily off a jump and Scott needed help from the medics to patch up an injury to his mouth.
The first race got away cleanly but was red flagged after 5 minutes when Jake Brown’s passenger Matthew Connor missed his footing and fell out on a very fast section of the track. Fortunately it appears that he probably suffered concussion but otherwise nothing more than bruising. Their day’s racing was over.
When the race was restarted Brown took the holeshot from Wilkinson and Campbell. As the race unfolded Brown slowly pulled away from Wilkinson and went on to win by over 35 seconds. Campbell held third place until the very last lap when he was overtaken by Hodges / Ide.
In the second race Brown again took the holeshot from Wilkinson with Campbell third. Behind the leading trio were Hodges, Gary Moulds / Steve Kirwin and Tony Grahame / Harley Lloyd. These positions were held until the seventh lap when Campbell made a mistake and dropped to seventh place. Brown took the win from Wilkinson with Hodges again finishing third.
The final race of the day saw Grahame lead into turn one just ahead of Wilkinson with Brown in third. Wilkinson and Brown both got past Grahame and Brown set off in pursuit of Wilkinson. By the end of lap one Wilkinson was just ahead of Brown with Moulds now in third and Grahame in fourth. At the beginning of lap three Brown made his move and never looked back going on to win by nearly twenty seconds from Wilkinson. Moulds held onto third and Grahame was fourth after losing that place to Kinge/ Humphrey in the middle of the race but regaining it on lap seven.
Brown took the overall win from Wilkinson with Hodges third. Brown now leads the championship table, fourteen points ahead of Wilkinson with Moulds third a further thirty one points adrift. In the Experts class Hodges holds an eleven point lead over Moulds with Oldfield / Barnes in third but a further fifty eight points behind.
The fourth round of the championship is at Dean Moor in Cumbria on 23
rd July hosted by the Iveston & Satley Club.