The British Motorcycle Racing Club’s annual International Sidecar Revival Festival took place at the weekend and in mixed conditions at Cadwell Park. The weekend marked the seventh running of the festival which saw sidecars from a plethora of classes and eras take to the Lincolnshire circuit.
Heading the programme was a round of the British Sidecar Championship, with three races running across the weekend, and there was drama in the first, with the outfit that crossed the line first slapped with a 10-second penalty for jumping the start.
Lewis Blackstock and Oscar Lawrence saw the chequered flag first but were eventually classified sixth. As a result, Luke Williams and Kevin Kölsch inherited the win, ahead of Sam and Adam Christie and Pekka Päivärinta and Adam Christie.
In eighth place Paul Kirby and Ema Salmon took the Cup class on their ARS Yamaha.
After topping warmup on Sunday morning, Päivärinta and Christie won a wet race two on the Christie Engineering Services LCR Yamaha. They took the win less than a second ahead of another LCR Yamaha outfit, piloted by Todd Ellis and Emanuelle Clement. After the disappointment of seeing the win snatched away in race one, Blackstock and Lawrence were on the podium in third, while Kirby and Salmon secured another Cup class win in eighth.
Despite qualifying on pole at the start of the weekend, the pairing of Sam and Jack Laidlow had had a disappointing weekend so far, having retired from race one and missed the podium in race two, finishing fourth.
However, the siblings ended the weekend on a high, winning race three. Blackstock and Lawrence led the early stages, but with two laps to go the Laidlow brothers hit the front and took the win by just over half a second.
Blackstock and Lawrence were second, half a second up on Päivärinta and Christie, while Kirby and Salmon were again eighth and the leading Cup riders.
There were also three races for the ACU FSRA British F2 Sidecars and all three were won by Lee Crawford and Scott Hardie aboard their Team ARC LCR Suzuki.
The podium was identical across all three races, as Crawford and Hardie were flanked by Steve Kershaw and Rhys Gibbons on the Express Tyres LCR Honda and with Kieran Clarke and Andrew Johnson on their CES Yamaha, backed by Eddys Moto.
With a best of fourth overall, Robert Dawson and Matthew Sims took three Cup class wins.
Bemsee’s F1 and F2 Sidecar classes were also in action, with four races running across the weekend.
The opening race ended with Eddie Wakley and Anthony Hildige taking overall victory for WPS Racing, with James Faiers and Mark Fox second and Ben Holland and Ricky Stevens completing the overall podium, just over half a second between them. Lambert/Haynes/Javens were the first F2 crew home in fifth overall.
After narrowly missing the podium in race one, the Smith duo of Will and Andy secured the win in race two, with Wakley and Hildige relegated to second place finish. Holland and Stevens were again third. F2 honours went to Patrick Farrance and Conor Parkin took F2 honours with a strong run to fifth overall
Greg Lambert was running two passengers over the course of the weekend, with Andy Haynes and Andy Javens sharing responsibilities in the chair. He took the F2 and overall victory on a drying track, narrowly beating the fellow F2 crew of Ross Buchanan and Adam Evans by just four tenths of a second, with Farrance and Parkin a further second back in third, making it an all-F2 podium. Faiers and Fox were the top F1 outfit in fifth overall.
There was another F2 win in the final race, with Farrance and Parkin victorious, a healthy four and a half seconds clear of Lambert with Charlie Morphet and Rob Coppock third overall. Lee Eastell and Alice Smith were the first F1 pairing across the line in fourth overall, but just half a second off the podium.
Across the festival weekend there were also four races for the FSRA 1st Call Pre-Injection Sidecar Championship and the Bears Sidecars, and four winning outfits in total.
Race one was won by Mark Burns and Cameron Winfield’s LCR Yamaha R1, backed by MRB Fencing, before race two ended with Greg Lambert and Andy Haynes on the top step of the podium on their F2 class Shelbourne Yamaha.
On Sunday it was the F2 outfit of Jim Noble and Abi Caiger that saw the chequered flag first, before Gary Fairhurst and Billy Andrews took the win on their 900cc Kawasaki-powered machine.
The European Classic Sidecar series, the Camathias Cup, enjoyed three races over the course of the weekend. Within the series are two classes: one class is for up to 750cc, four- stroke machines and air-cooled two-strokes up to 500cc, the other for four-stroke kit over 750cc and up to 750cc two-strokes. Four-stroke machines must be manufactured in 1972 or earlier, the two-stroke sidecars must be pre-1967.
Danny Quirk and Sharon Reeves took a brace of overall victories and two wins in the Over class on a Bellas Vincent. They won races one and three, finishing runner-up in race two. The win in that race went the way of Raymond Reeves and Yens Van Den Boor on a Weslake Windle.
There were two class wins in the Up To class for Jon Perkins and Ian Nickels, after finishing sixth in races one and two. The other class win went to Shaun Motson and Flo Lissaman on a BSA A70, after finishing seventh in race three.
Punctuating the three-wheeled action were the DFDS Yamaha Past Masters and the Fyne Audio and SF Parts BMCRC Thunderbike 500.
Kevin Wholey dominated the exclusive Yamaha two-stroke championship races, winning all four on his TZR250. In race one, he took a commanding victory by eight and a half seconds over Mark Haigh, with David Ball just four tenths of a second back in third. He was again eight and a half seconds clear in race two, this time from Alan Cooper, while Haigh finished third.
Wholey continued his winning streak on Sunday, crossing the line five and a half seconds ahead of Ball in race three, who held off Haigh in third. In the final race Haigh keept Wholey honest but was still nearly two seconds adrift, with Cooper a further eight tenths of a second back in third.
In the Honda CB500 class, Josh Leaning won race one and with it took the C2 class victory leading home Daniel North and Dominic Herbertson, who rounded out the podium. Leaning then went on to take the runner-up spot in races two, three, and four, and each time he was narrowly beaten by his brother William Leaning (also in the C2 class). Herbertson added three more third place finishes.
In the C3 category, Oliver MacRae was the class-winner in the opening two races, finishing sixth and fifth overall, respectively. Ian Carter and Colt Dwyer took over as C3 winners in races three and four, finishing ninth and 10th overall in the final races. In the C1 class, Jake Kourti and James Tucker split the C1 wins