Wednesday May 11, 2011 at 2:50pm
The opening round of the 2011 Track Racing Sidecar Championship will take place at the East of England Showground in Peterborough on Saturday 14th May. For 2011 the event will be run alongside the BMF May show, this is the first time that the ACU 1000cc Sidecar championship has been run alongside the BMF in the last 10 years. With the BMF show drawing in over 50,000 visitors it is the largest outdoor bike show held in Europe and a great platform to help promote the sport of Track Racing.
The 1000cc Sidecar Track Racing championship will be a great spectacle at the event, with many people seeing Sidecar Track Racing for the first time. The sport of 1000cc Sidecar Track Racing is very unique and features bespoke machines that use engines from Road Racing Superbike such as the Yamaha R1, Suzuki GSX1000 and Kawasaki ZX10R and Yamaha FZR. These powerful engines which can produce up to 180bhp are then placed into specialist frames and reach top speeds of up to 80mph on bikes equipped with no brakes.
Track Racing Sidecars involve a rider and their passenger being mounted on a purpose built, three-wheeled sidecar outfit, where the passenger of the machine is as much involved in the race performance as the rider. The two members of the sidecar crew work in unison to ride the outfit as best they can. With Speedway circuits’ such as the one at Peterborough consisting of a loose shale surface, traction is of the upmost importance and the passenger plays a major part of controlling the amount of traction being created on the rear wheel. He/she does this by moving their weight forwards, backwards and sideways, often hanging over the edge of the outfit. With the Sidecar outfit designed to only turn to the right, passengers apply their weight to the right hand side of the machine.
The opening round of the 2011 Track Racing Sidecar Championship already features a bumper line up of Sidecar teams like the reigning British Track Racing Champions Matt Tyrrell and Mark Courtney as well as last year’s British Masters Champion and British Sideway Speedway Champions Mark Cossar and Carl Blyth. Other entries include past Masters Champions Paul Whitelam and Alan Elliott, Rob Wilson and Terry Saunters and also Gary Jackson and Henry Rodgers. Racing starts at 11:45 and will be running until 1:45 in the afternoon. With 1000cc Sidecar meeting forming part of the main entertainment in the main ring, entrance to the racing is included in the gate price for the BMF Show.