SANDRACING REPORT 29/05/2010

The 4^th meeting of the season was held under a cloud, firstly due to the dull weather conditions but secondly with the news of the death of Vince Kinchin a top English grasstrack rider who was due to compete at the forthcoming Sand Ace meeting. The only bright news that though they were both not riding at this meeting the 2 riders involved in the serious accident at the end of the last meeting were up & about recovering from the bruising they obtained & both hoping to compete at the Sand Ace meeting. This left only 4 slider riders down for this meeting with veteran rider Dave Cleal having to defend from young charger Robert Teed  & Jersey rider Kevin Bishop with Dave taking 4 wins to Roberts 2 & Kevin’s 1 whilst Robert’s father Colin had a disappointing afternoon twice just pulling away from the start before the engine died on him. In fact in their last race of the afternoon both Colin & Robert were having troubles, Robert running very wide on the corners so this left Pierre Rive on his Suzuki Salt Blaster 1100 road bike to take 3^rd place. The only other rider in this class was Nick Russell on his as unlikely beach bike a Honda Sand Blade 900. There were no 250cc competitors for this meeting as Eddie Goracy on his final practice lap changed down 2 gears too quickly damaging the motor which will now be stripped & re built for the meeting after next.

In the junior class it was a battle of the Billy’s with Billy Russell on his new Kawasaki 85 taking the upper hand over Billy-Reece Rive on his Honda 8, these 2 riders taking all the 1^st & 2^nd places. Ricky-Lee Rive on his Honda 85 took the majority of the 3^rd spots only missing out when he failed to start one race & stalling on the start line a couple of times thus letting Josh Lambourne on his KTM 65 into this position.

 It was taking these 4 riders a little longer then usual to lap Jarrod Carrington on his Honda 70 as his riding pace has increased.

Only 8 cars came under starters orders & that was only for one race as Jean-Paul Kennedy broke the chain on his grasstrack car on the start line for practice, so had to go home to collect a replacement, once this had been fitted his practice runs ended with a jammed throttle cable so once this had been sorted caught just do one race. Mark Ozanne held the upper hand in the racing car class but Simon Carre who was still

suffering from the arm injury obtained at the previous was never too far behind. Large production saloon competitors Eric Trump & Shaun Leigh were very evenly matched. John Dean again held sway in the medium sized production saloons whilst Ricky Le Cheminant had to contend with the close attention of Jack Sanders who was down for the first time this season with a 1598cc Toyota MR2 rear engined car which was kicking up plenty of spray for any close following competitors.

Paul Stanford