SAND RACING REPORT 10^th August 2013

On the longest course set out yet this season the eleven car competitors who took the start for the Victoria Trophy faced their biggest challenge of the year when they faced the prospect of completing 20 laps without overheating, running short of fuel or other mechanical problems, surprisingly they all completed this challenge with little or no problems. The 2 lady drivers lead the field away with Faye just piping Kayleigh for 2^nd place & their strong defensive driving keep all the other saloons behind them. The most fortunate driver was the winner Gary Duquemin who having only completed 2 of the 3 previous races with a badly mis-firing engine had not recorded a competitive time so was given a slightly advantageous handicap & so was able to work his way through the field. The other races had the usual results with only the cars in the Production class up to 1800cc moving places around.

In all 4 bike classes one rider dominated the class. Stoke based Dan Winterton took all 6 wins in the sliders with Rob Teed & Martyn Guilbert being the most consistent of the local though Bill Cohu did manage a 2^nd place. The MX class was taken by Hamish Moriaty whilst Adam Le Lacheur took all the 2^nd places & Barney Henry the 3^rd spots the only change to this order was in the final scratch race where these riders moved onto the large oval course instead of their twisty infield course & jump. As Hamish’s bike was not geared for the full blast round the oval track this allowed Barney Henry to take the win. Cadet class was won be Rhys Melass who coped with the longer track better than his main rival Dan Clark whilst Kieran Bennett & Braden Morris had their own battle for 3^rd spot which Kieran was able to take in all races as his bike was just that bit bigger than Braden’s little KTM 49cc. Most unfortunate rider was Intermediate Josh Lambourne as he had no competition in this class so was forced to ride a minimum of 3 laps in each race to gain his championship points, so for the final scratch race he swapped to the MX course to have the chance of riding the jump & twisty course.

Paul Stanford