At the start of a new season, after seeing no racing for six months, what the spectators want to see is a good close race to start things off. How about a race-winning margin of seven hundredths of a second?
The first race of the new season was the Allcomers event in which Richard Cooper was doing a bit of testing for the Buildbase Suzuki team alongside team superstock racer Tom Oliver. Richard is not exactly a stranger to winning races at Mallory Park over a long period of time, and the first race saw him leading Tom Oliver by margins that varied from nothing to 0.4 seconds over the course of ten laps, with Tom making a last-lap effort to take the lead but missing out by 0.075 seconds. Last year’s Allcomers champion Ashley King held on to the leaders for a time and was only two seconds behind in third with Mikey Leeson taking fourth. The same riders went head to head again in the first Mallory Trophy race, but Cooper was able to stretch the gap a bit to over two seconds, while Ashley King held third for most of the race until Sean Anderson grabbed that place right at the end. The second Allcomers race saw Cooper down in seventh place on lap one, almost five seconds off the lead, and it took him eight laps to work his way up to second place behind Oliver and Tom held on for his first victory of 2022. His second one came a bit later in the second Mallory Trophy race when Cooper retired at half-distance leaving Sean Anderson, Mikey Leeson and Ashley King to continue their race-long battle in second place, finishing in that order a tenth of a second apart.
After that first race winning margin, it would be unreasonable to expect an even closer finish – unless there was a CB500 race. Paul Sawyer spent two-thirds of the opening CB500 event in the lead, while Terry Allsopp fought with Darren Faulkner over second place, but gradually Allsopp closed on the leader and with two laps to go it was Allsopp just ahead of Sawyer, and that was how it stayed with the winning margin being just five-hundredths of a second. It was Allsopp who led the second race early on but Faulkner took the lead and gradually pulled away with Sawyer taking over second for a time, before Allsopp recovered the place two laps from the finish.
In 2021 the pre-injection races were usually a battle between Steve Brittain and Aaron Staniforth. The only thing that has changed for 2022 is that Aaron has got a Fireblade now, but the racing is just as close. Race one saw Aaron ahead for four laps until Steve took over gradually pulling away to win by two seconds. Aaron held on to the lead for six laps in race two but when Steve took the lead, he couldn’t shake off his pursuer and finished just half a second ahead
Reigning 600 champion Ricky Tarren won the opening 600 race of 2022, but he had to follow Joe Howard for the first half of the race. Race two saw Joe start from the back of the grid, but he was up to second after two laps and by half distance he was ahead of Ricky Tarren, but it was hard to get away and when the flag dropped five laps later the gap was only a second and a half.
The new Classic Era class bore a strong resemblance to the Earlystock series, not least in the way that John Chambers won both races on his 750 Honda. The margin in the first race was over half a minute, but race two was much closer with Alan Moreton’s RG500 in close attendance throughout. Last year’s two-stroke champion (and former 600 champion) John Lea continued downsizing with a 125 Honda and won his class from Phil Harvey, while Freddy Oakley took the 450 class with his 300 Yamaha.
Louis Dawson continued his winning run from last year on the 660 Aprilia winning the twins races, while Jamie Ingham won the Minitwins class in both races. Kyle Abell won both rookies races from David Kortegas, who took the 1000 class, and in the open 500 events it was David Reynolds who took both races.