The weather forecast for Sunday in the East Midlands suggested a Silverstone scenario, where the rain lashes down for hours and everyone goes home without even getting the bike out of the van. Fortunately, the reality was very different with blue skies after a bit of rain early on, and some brilliant racing – the best of all being the two Rookie races, where the lead was disputed between three riders right to the flag, with last lap moves settling the results.
Luke Penny has dominated the Ducati Coventry/JHP Rookie series all through the year, and set out in the Craig Rudge Trophy race at the head of the field closely pursued by his chief rival Tim Hudson, but by half distance it was a three-way battle with Rob Simpson coming through to take second and briefly to take the lead, only for Penny to regain it next time round. As the final lap began It was Simpson again, but there was scarcely a wheel’s width between them, and at the finish Simpson took the win by three-tenths of a second with Tim Hudson less than a second down in third. Second place gave Luke Penny the championship, but Rob took the Craig Rudge Trophy the short distance home to Barwell. The second race was for the Richard Moreton trophy, and that too was a three-way scrap for most of the race, with Tim Hudson heading Simpson and Nic Sweet in the early laps until Simpson took over on lap four and by half-distance Sweet was in second and closing. On lap nine Sweet made it to the front but at the hairpin Rob, in his own words “never pulled anything so hard in my life as that brake lever” as he outbraked Nic and held on to win by a third of a second.
The EMRA 500 championship will not be decided until 21
st October at the Race of the Year, which is good news as we can all watch some more of the excellent racing it always produces. The first race was pretty standard fare for the class with a second and a half covering the first four at the end, James Butcher leading lap one, Phillip Stevens taking over next time round and Ben Bailey inches ahead on lap five, then giving way to Stevens again only to retake the lead on the penultimate lap and hold on to it while Butcher made a last lap effort to grab second from Stevens, while Wayne Saunders kept the championship very much alive taking a close fourth place. The second race was very unusual, in that the same man led throughout – James Butcher took the lead straight from the start, and although it took half the race to get the margin over Ben Bailey up to a whole second, after that the gap gradually grew to three seconds, Wayne Sutton being ten seconds behind.
The Buildbase Mallory Trophy also concludes next month, which is good news for Paul Westerdale, who nearly threw away his potential championship crashing in the closing laps of practice damaging both bike and rider, causing him to miss the first Buildbase race, but by dinner time he had managed to Sellotape the bike back together enough to contest race two, as well as the two Allcomers races. Brad Ray won both Buildbase races, getting in some testing for next week’s BSB Showdown races (although Mallory and Assen are perhaps not quite identical circuits in terms of set-up). Curtis Wright made a scrap of it for a while on a damp track in race one finishing only three seconds behind the Buildbase Suzuki with Carl Morris third ahead of Mikey Leeson. Race two saw Ray double that advantage, while Ashley King and Mikey Leeson scrapped for third throughout, King taking the place by a fifth of a second with Paul Westerdale picking up vital points in sixth having started from the back of the grid.
Brad Ray won both of the Allcomers races, but the championship was between Paul Westerdale and Mikey Leeson, and despite being somewhat knocked about after his crash, Paul was able to get just enough points to take the title finishing sixth in race one to Leeson’s third, while race two saw him take fourth just behind Ashley King and even second place could not gain Leeson enough points to make up the gap. Curtis Wright came to Mallory leading the Open 600 championship from Jed Bird, and won both races with Jed second to confirm the final championship positions.
Chris Ashfield was another potential champion whose bike found its way into the gravel at the Elbow in practice, but without too much damage – certainly not enough to stop him winning a further two Minitwins races and finishing with an even more massive lead over Duane Bliss, who took second in both races. Third place in the Lightweight class twice over was just enough to gain the championship for Roger Neep, who started the day twenty points ahead of Andrew Bailey, and even though Bailey took second in both events to Steve Moody, it was not quite enough to turn the tables.
The 450 class produced a fascinating battle between Daniel Walling on a TZ250 Yamaha and Jodie Fieldhouse on the Moto 3 machine on which she has been consistently scoring Motostar points, with the TZ finishing a third of a second up after ten laps in race one, and less than a quarter of a second in front in race two. Lewis Jones finished third in both races to take the 450 title on his 390 KTM. Martin Tranter won the first F125 race, which clinched the championship, making him probably one of the oldest EMRA champions while Karen England won the GP125 class.
Andy King and Andrew Sigsworth have dominated the sidecar class all season and second place to Kevin Morgan was enough to bring him yet another championship, so his win over Robert Atkinson in race two was just a bonus.
Mick Corrigan is an occasional visitor in the Earlystock class, but when he makes an appearance he usually wins by a large margin, and Sunday was very much in that category, when he beat James Fisher in race one by 37 seconds- Fisher being more concerned with holding off Michael Hand who was 0.3 seconds behind at the end. Race two was even more of a demonstration ride – 43 seconds ahead of Kevin Jones who in turn was half a second up on Alec Gilfillan.
The meeting was the final round of the ACU 50cc championship, and the penultimate round of the Classic and Modern 50 club series, and Shane Norval won both races, the first by six seconds over Kevin Burton, who had already taken the ACU series, while the second was a battle with Tom Weeden which went to Norval by just a third of a second, despite Weeden putting in a best lap of 72mph.