SANDRACING REPORT 05/05/2012

The wet weather did not deter the competitors from trying to put on some good races for the few hardy spectators at the 3^rd event of the season. There was a sight increase in the number of car competitors present but once again newcomer David Rice who having sorted out his electrical problem from the first meeting has yet to begin even the practice as this time the chain snapped on his Suzuki sand buggy leaving only Jarod Smith in the racing car class with his Honda engine sand buggy thought even he made a major mistake in forgetting to switch the fuel on for the handicap race leaving him 5 laps in arrears at the end of the race after pulling into the centre of the course after ½ a lap to fix this problem.

Eric Trump in the small engine saloon certainly has no fear of mixing it the larger cars almost coming into second place overall in the final race of the day. Class for 1400 to 1800 saloons should have been the most competitive but for this meeting it was Karl West that broke down after practice & took no further part in the meeting thus leaving Shaun Leigh & Craig Whales to do battle for race honours with Leigh coming out on top once Craig had to retire. Newcomer to this class was Wayne Martel in a Ford Puma a model of car not before seen on the beach. Large car class was dominated by the 4wd Subaru of Simon Carre so the real class battle was between the 2wd cars of Faye Downes who was driving much more aggressively & Darren De Carteret & today it was the lady who won.

Cadets had the same 2 young riders in Daniel Clarke & Barnaby Queried & things were much closer at this meeting after Daniel’s dad had worked on the carburettor on this 12 year old bike which had not turned a wheel in 8 years, Daniel managing to win the first race but from them on was always chasing Barnaby. Juniors were down to 2 riders as once again bike problems prevented Billy Russell for competing in any of the races, this left Josh Lambourne to take a clean slate of 6 wins whilst Jarod Carrington only managed to complete 4 races.

Another rider to take maximum spoils was Anthony Queripel who dominated the senior motorcycles with his 6 wins whist the 2^nd place spots went 1 to Dave Cleal, 2 to Anthony Bougourd & 3 to Rob Teed. 3^rd places were 3 to Dave, 2 to Rob & taking 3^rd in the Committee Cup race was Eddie Goracy, this just left Mike Clarke, Dave Patton & Colin Teed to pick up any lower positions if they were still running. A couple of riders had already decided not to take part due to the weather but this did not stop Phil Ferbrache putting in a late entry on his Honda 250 motocross bike . Phil was keeping up with the slower of the 500cc sliders 7 actually came 3^rd overall in the Committee Cup race.

Next meeting on May 19^th at 11am.

Paul Stanford