Sand Racing Report 8^th August 2014

It’s the middle of summer the sky is blue, the sun is out, the sea is calm but Vazon beach was far from being smooth sand as large holes & bumps effected the lay out of the course having to be dropped lower down as a row of large stones had appeared along the top straight whilst the wet corner was giving problems to the sliders as it was very rough. It was a disappointing turn out of just 5 sliders (4 after George Van Der Tang retired during the first race) that were left to contest the highly prized title of King of the Beach which went to reigning king, Anthony Bougourd, who also took the championship & committee cup race wins. Rob Teed took second place in all these races whilst the battle for third spot was between the old stagers Dave Cleal& Colin Teed.

Even the MX class was down on numbers, back to running just an infield twisty section which began half way down the back straightbefore turning sharp left onto a short straight which included the jump which was taken as they headed back towards the slip corner. Billy Russell & Tony Duquemin were the leading riders though Daniel Pinchemain was not too far behind. Matt Le Gallez had the middle ground whilst the 3 Kawasaki mounted riders were improving in speed with Martin Symons having to watch out for Paul Le Messurier.

Unfortunately Ricky Rive could not get his bike to work so were down to just 4 juniors where Billy Rive should have clinched all race wins but by giving the motocross riders a head start in a number of races & the short track he missed out in 2 races of catching & passing all of them. There was little distance between Josh, George & Jarrod in the fight for fastest motocross bike. Though only 3 riders again appeared for the cadet class Dan & Kieran were joined by a fourth generation of the Bougourd family as young Jack took to the sands for his first event. As bike problems effected both Kieran & Jack it was only in their last race that all 3 started & finished the race.

Even the cars numbers were lower than the last couple of meetings.Clint Blondel was running a new motor in his Purple Dragon but this did not stop him chasing Jack Sanders & even taking a race win, unfortunately Paul Penney was still having problems with his car. Simon Carre finally managed to get the Prelude running but it still lacked power, sounded awful & ended up blowing out a lot of smoke. Eric, Jonathan & Neil in their production cars were joined by Jonathan’s brother Andrew in a 1600cc Peugeot (another driver making a return to the beach after a period of approx. 15 years), he gained speed as the meeting progressed.

Paul Stanford