Monday April 4, 2011 at 9:30am
Preview of 2011 British sidecarcross championships
April 10th is the date of the opening round of the 2011 Maxxis British sidecarcross championships with this year’s opener being held at Wooley Grange in the North East. It is the first time for many years that the championship has visited the north east and the members of the North East MXC in conjunction with motocross committee chairman and motocross secretary Sonia Goggin have put in a lot of hard work to ensure the meeting is a success.
Over the winter months there have been a number of significant changes within the top teams. Current champion Stuart Brown lost the services of Luke Peters who retired as a passenger and is now teamed up with Josh Chamberlain. Runner up last year Scott Wilkinson has also changed his passenger as his last year’s crewman, David Keane, has returned to being a driver. He now has Craig Parmenter in the chair. Other drivers with new passengers are: Steve France, Ross Bowers, Nick Bowers and Stickle Jarvis. Most teams will be riding the same machines as last year with the notable exception of Paul Pelling. Paul has moved away from Husqvarna power and has gone for the 707cc Jawa engine as campaigned so well by the Czech brothers, Tomas & Ondreij Cermak.
Pre season training has gone well for the leading teams with both Brown / Chamberlain and the Millard brothers getting good results amongst top world runners in Belgium & Holland.
Wilkinson / Chamberlain are sure to be near the front as are the Breachers on their right handed machine. Looking to improve on their twelfth place last year are Jack Etheridge / Ryan Humphrey but a recent accident has kept Jack out of the saddle for the past few weeks.
The seven round championship moves further south for the remaining rounds finishing off at Wakes Colne on 9th October.
The action at the opening round starts with practice at 09.00 hrs. Admission for adults is £10 and for children above 5 years £5. The track will be signposted from the A68 at Tow Law and for those with Sat nav the nearest postcode is DL15 9AN. As well as the three sidecar championship races there will be races for Adult Expert/Junior - 85cc - Youth Open.