Sand Racing Report 15/09/2012

The penultimate round of the 2012 sand race season had the usual mix of Cadet/Junior & Senior bike competitors but was lacking a decent entry of car drivers with only 4 competitors due partly to the clashing Alderney motor sport weekend. The number of car competitors has been at an all time low these season & it must be on the mind of the committee to address this problem before the 2013 season begins.

With neither Anthony’s Bougourd nor Queripel entered the field was wide open to be exploited & it was Mike Clarke who had the best of the afternoon taking 6 of the 7 race wins. The only other winner was club president Bill Cohu who got his hands on the afternoon’s bike trophy race which was for The Cohu & Gillou Trophy. Second place in most races was hotly contested by long time rider Dave Cleal & second youngest adult rider Robert Teed who was having one of his better afternoons. Having taken a spill at the last meeting it was good to see Colin Teed out once more in the middle of the field whilst Nick Russell on the only Moto Cross style bike was battling with the sliders of Eddie Goracy & Anyon Robilliard with neither getting the best out of their machines. Having only started out in the senior section at last meeting on his 125cc KTM Billy Russell changed up to a Nutrak Suzuki 250 slider for this meeting which meant a complete change of riding style, riding causally to learn & keeping wide in the corners when being lapped Billy completed every race he started without any problems & will hopefully be a rider to watch in the future.

Not originally listed on the program 2 junior riders appeared for this meeting & gave some very close racing. Though Billy-Reece Rive did take all 7 race wins he was fortunate that in the 1^st race Jarod Carrington mistook the last lap flag as the end of race & rode into the pits instead of completing the final lap & taking the chequered flag for a possible win. This was the closest racing yet between these 2 riders & shows how much Jarod has improved over this season.

The cadets were boosted by the first time appeared of Kieran Bennett on a small KTM 50 (he has already got a larger bike lined up for next year) but the real interest was on Daniel Clarke’s new Kawasaki 65 which has more power then the Honda he has been using all season. It only took Daniel one race to master this machine before taking a string of 5 wins before finding out that too much power at the wrong time will throw you off the bike but with dad close by he was soon up & running again in the final race but could not catch Barnaby Queripel for that last race win.

After 3 previous unsuccessful attempts at racing at last David Rice managed to complete a meeting admittedly it was using the ex Jarod Smith Honda Buggy not his original Suzuki version & he ended up being the first racing car driver to win a handicap race this season in taking the Rex Collins Trophy. The 3 saloons present were fairly evenly matched so produced some close races with new comer Shaun Bichard in a Honda CRX 1600 taking 4 wins whilst Wayne Martel in the Ford Puma 1700 took the 2 Northmore trophy race wins. Eric Trump in the smaller saloon with no competion took the wins for production cars up to 1400cc.

Paul Stanford