Wednesday August 7, 2019 at 12:24pm
Round four of the East Midland Racing Association championships saw Luke Stapleford set a new Mallory Park lap record at an EMRA meeting of 50.299 seconds, a speed of 99.48mph. This sets a target for his Buildbase Suzuki team mate Brad Ray in Sunday’s fifth round race meeting, with the even bigger target of the magic 100mph lap. Brad has four chances of setting a new record – two Buildbase Mallory Trophy races, as well as two rides in the Tamworth Yamaha Allcomers championship.
His opposition in all those races is headed by Buildbase championship leader Louis Dawson, who operated some kind of countdown system in the previous round in July when he finished fourth in his first race – the opening Allcomers race, third in the first Buildbase Trophy race, second in the Richard Jones Trophy race behind Phil Crowe, and finally got a win in the second of the Buildbase races . His main rival in the Buildbase trophy is former champion Lee Wilson, with Ryan Oliver third. Oliver heads the Allcomers championship by just five points from Louis Dawson, and Lee Wilson third.
The Bridgestone/Fast Bikes 500 series has been over-subscribed to the point where there are three races at each meeting as well as an additional 500 minitwins series, and the racing is very close, four or five-man battles for the lead being normal. Wayne Sutton succeeded in snatching the win on the last lap from Martin Radford in the first Bridgestone race after a five bike scrap which lasted almost the whole race, and then did the same thing again in the Minitwins race . The championship is very close, as might be expected, and one race result can turn the table upside down, but at present Martin Radford heads the Bridgestone table by ten points from Paul Sawyer, with Scott Gregg and Darren Faulkner next up; Iain Fairgrieve heads the Minitwin 500s from John McLaren and Radford, while the DJ Emmanuelle 40-plus championship sees Sawyer just three points ahead of Radford. Sunday’s entry includes a new contingent of four riders from Barnsley in this class, which, together with the four in other classes, makes Barnsley the largest entry under ”home town” on the programme – an honour usually reserved for Nuneaton.
Luke Burnett is on his way to a double championship – he has won seven out of eight races in the Powerslide/Properly Protected Rookie championship and finished second in the other, and he is 43 points ahead of Rich Baker in the Open 600 class, despite Baker taking a double win in July.
Jodie Fieldhouse should be able to resume her sequence of victories in the open 125-450 class, after missing the last round having broken her arm at Brands Hatch in June – her first rostrums in the Motostar standard class at Thruxton suggest she is fully recovered.
The closest championship of all is the Lightweight class where Darren Corkett is a single point ahead of Andrew Bailey.
Qualifying starts at 9.30, and the first race follows qualifying at around 11.30