Seven race wins from seven starts made Louis Dawson the star of the two-day EMRA race meeting at Mallory Park, taking all four Supertwin races on the smaller of his two Aprilias (is this the first win for one of the new 660s ?), and taking victory in the 16-lap marathon Mallory Trophy race on Saturday as well as both ten-lappers on Sunday. Louis made a lightning start for the 16-lapper while Michael Leeson, Andrew Fisher and Ashley King fought over second place, allowing Dawson to build up a lead, and by half distance when King had fought through to second the gap was five seconds, and King was only able to halve that. On Sunday the races were shorter, but the lead was bigger, as Leeson beat King for second by a fifth of a second in the first, with King second ahead of Leeson in the second race. The Supertwin races all followed the same pattern as Dawson took the lead while Jamie Kelman took second place and Marcus Tatchell won the 400 category each time. Does seven Aprilia victories put Louis ahead of Maverick in the job interview for 2022?
The best races on both days were the Midland Superbike Performance Rookie events with three different winners, close finishes and race-long battles. Sam Leach led the first race throughout, but was under pressure from Harry Harris for the whole race, winning by half a second. Leach led the second race for half the race, but once Harris got ahead Sam dropped away finishing six seconds down. Sunday’s first race was a three man battle all through, with Harris holding the lead throughout hotly pursued by Leach and Alex Pearson, the three covered by less than half a second after ten laps. The final race saw Kyle Abell in front for the first couple of laps, but there were four different leaders during the course of the race, Leach, Harris and, when it counted most, Alex Pearson, finishing 0.3 seconds ahead of Harris with Leach taking third and Abell fourth – a brilliant finale to the thirty-six race programme.
Former Rookie champion Luke Burnett and Michael Leeson fought throughout Saturday’s 16-lap Allcomers race, Burnett’s winning margin of three-quarters of a second being the biggest gap any time in the race. Ricky Tarren and Stefan Ellis were even more closely matched in the 600 class, Tarren winning by less than a tenth. Leeson won Sunday’s first Allcomers race from Tarren , and then the second race was closer than ever with Leeson holding off the challenge of Burnett and King until the seventh lap when King finally got through to beat Leeson by under a second.
Darren Faulkner and Richard Blunt shared the wins in the Dunlop CB500 events, Blunt taking the Jason O’Halloran/Christian Iddon approach in race one following Faulkner closely until going past on the last lap. Race two saw Faulkner take the win by two seconds, then in race three Mark Biswell spent the first half of the race getting between Blunt and Faulkner, but once Faulkner got ahead he stayed there to win by two seconds. Blunt was the winner in race three, by a second and a quarter, but race four came to a premature end when Faulkner crashed at the hairpin on lap seven.
Marcus Tatchell won all four 500 races from Richard Blunt, and Steve Brittain beat Aaron Staniforth in all of the Pre-injection races .John Lea ran away with all of the Alamo Racing Sound of Music two-stroke races on his TZ250, recording lap times that would put him in the top ten in the Allcomers races, while John Chambers won the Earlystock class in all four races and Aaron Lilly took the 450 open class four times.
The first of Sunday’s sidecar races was the Phil Dongworth trophy race, for the heaviest trophy in club racing, and the battle was between Wayne Lockey, who has won it more times than anyone else, and Paul Kirby. John Luebke appeared on the startline brandishing the trophy before the race, and it clearly inspired Wayne who led for the first five laps, but the pressure from Kirby was growing every lap and on lap six the lead changed and it was the Kirby brothers who were ahead at the end of ten laps. Having presented the trophy John was able to relive his own days as a passenger with half a lap on the chair.