SANDRACING REPORT 05/04/2008

The sandrace season finally got underway with a full programme of races for all classes at the 2^nd meeting of the year though on a very rough beach.. For the adult bike riders the programme of races was different to past years in that 5 of the races though held as scratch races with both sliders & motocross riders racing together, were in fact counting towards the Pealing Carey Handicap Trophy. Before the meeting all the riders had been handicapped with a Golf type handicap so that the slowest rider started from a position of 40 points whilst the fastest riders were on nil points. This meant that though the 1^st & 2^nd places were going to different slider riders the motocross bikes riders were more consistent in gaining points with lower finishing positions. At the end of the day it appears that the handicapping favoured the motocross riders as they took the first 3 places quite comfortably (perhaps the handicapping will have to be adjusted before the next handicap meeting later in the year). For the other 2 races the bikes were split so that the sliders did only 4 lap races whilst the motocross boys were given 8laps.

The 4 cadets that appeared 3 aged 8 & one 7 were given the opportunity to practice both on their smaller track & the full course before deciding which suited them better, it was decided to use the smaller track. Dean Chandler down from Alderney was out on the MK3 version of his GCS Sandracer as each year as he grows bigger so his bike has to be increased in size too. Though Dean managed a clean sweep of wins he was at times being pushed by the Rive twins & had to race hard to take the lead from Joshua Lambourne in the final race which was turned into a handicap race to make things more interesting,

In the racing car class things were not very well as after practice Colin Bridle in the Cosworth powered Skoda was out with a water leak & Trevor Le Page had to seek the Clerk of the Course’s permission to leave the beach to weld up a broken frame, returning just in time to take 3^rd place in the handicap race but returning to the pits with a broken drive shaft. Ricky Le Cheminant in the single seater shaped Kawasaki Swift 1100cc managed to break the throttle cable during pre event checks so work was being done on his car for the first half of the meeting to replace this part. Finally Ricky was allowed out on his own to get in his practice laps but somehow managed to do 2 laps on the outside of the course before marshals could steer him in the correct direction. The saloon car classes were still short of entries with only the addition of Doug Le Fevre & John Le Page to the programme though Simon Carre has now changed from the Peugeot special to an automatic Prelude. Hopefully more competitors will be out for the next meeting on May 3^rd.

Paul Stanford.