Tuesday June 4, 2019 at 12:37pm
Mallory Park hosts the third round of the East Midland Racing Association championships on Sunday 9th June, when there are nineteen races, with packed grids in most classes.
The Buildbase Mallory Trophy saw two great scraps between former champion Lee Wilson and Aprilia-mounted Louis Dawson in round two last month, Lee taking the first win and Louis the second, while the Tamworth Yamaha Allcomers races gave Wilson two more victories. Sunday’s races will be enlivened by the return of Alan Moreton on a Suzuki RG500.
Paul Sawyer won the first of the Bridgestone Fast Bikes Magazine 500 races by just a quarter of a second from Martin Radford, who was closing very quickly as the races came to the finish, and although Peter Bardell won the other two races quite comfortably, the battles for second spot among the EMRA regulars were very close. Scott Gregg was just one-seventh of a second ahead of Martin Radford in race two, and in race three Ian Fairgrieve held off the challenge of Gregg and Paul Sawyer with less than a second covering all three at the flag. Sawyer heads the championship by just three points from Gregg with Fairgieve and Radford tying for third. Last year’s 500 champion Wayne Sutton was missing last month but is back for this meeting and will doubtless be somewhere near the front in Sunday’s races. The DJ Emanuele cup for the over-40 class (which is about a third of the field) is also led by Sawyer. The 500s also have an extra outing in the Minitwins series.
The new 450 class is growing in numbers each meeting, and is remarkable for the fact that all the races so far have been won by women – Annabel Thomas at the first meeting and Jodie Fieldhouse beating Annabel into second place in both races last month. It may be the inspiration of Ana Carasco’s world title in the 300 Supersport class last year, but suddenly there are a lot more female riders, especially on SS300 bikes, to the point that almost half the field in the 450 race is female. Jodie and Annabel who are ninth and seventh in the Motostar series are joined by Chloe Jones, who scored national championship points at Donington two weeks ago on her 300 Yamaha, Charlotte Marcuzzo on a 300 Ninja and Alyssia Whitmore and Scarlet Robinson on KTM390s, alongside Kim Rose and Karen England on GP125 Hondas. The male contestants are led by Brian Precious on a 125, Giles Harwood on a TZ250 Yamaha and third-generation racer Jamie Hanks-Elliott on a 300 Ninja, while another long-established racing dynasty is represented by Charlie and Martin Tranter on 125 Aprilias.
The Ducati Coventry/ JHP Racing open 600 class has seen Jed Bird take three wins and a second out of four starts, and the two races will also decide the James Dixon Trophy on an aggregate result.
Steve Brittain has dominated the Pre-injection class winning all four races to date, with Jordan Watling second each time while Steve Moody won the first three Lightweight races.
Qualifying starts at 9.30; racing shortly after 11am.