The East Midland Racing Association championships reach the penultimate round on Sunday, 4th September at Mallory Park, with all titles yet to be decided, and two titles so close that a single point separates first and second place.
Ashley King and Mikey Leeson have battled throughout the season for the Mallory Trophy, and after eleven races the gap is just fifteen points in favour of Ashley. The first three championship rounds saw King sand Leeson share the spoils with a first and a second apiece, round four saw King get a double victory, and at last month’s two day meeting Leeson won on Saturday with King victorious in both of Sunday’s races.. The two were never more than half a second apart for the first eleven laps of race one, the margin at the end of twelve laps being 1.2 seconds. Race two was equally close with a margin of under a second.
It has been a similar story in the Allcomers races, where, after King’s double in March, there were shared victories in rounds two, three and four, giving King a ten point margin at the beginning of the August meeting. Leeson crashed out of the first race, and although he managed to get the bike (and himself) repaired for Sunday he was only able to get a second and an unprecedented third place on Sunday leaving a gap of 49 points to close over the remaining two meetings.
It comes as no surprise to find that one of the closest title battles is in the CB500 class where there have been six different race winners in twelve races, three won by Owen Monaghan, who leads the table by two points from Terry Allsopp (who along with Darren Faulkner, Darren Conneeley and Liam Sylvain is a double race winner) the remaining win going to Ryan Galvin. The August two-dayer started with a CB500 race in which Terry Allsopp came from seventh place on lap one to snatch the lead from Liam Sylvain on the penultimate lap to win by a quarter of a second, with Paul Sawyer third ahead of Owen Monaghan. The second race in the class saw the same four riders in completely different order, Monaghan winning from Sylvain with Sawyer third and Allsopp fourth. Sunday’s races were enlivened by the addition of Leon Jeacock,who won both events, but he doesn’t score championship points and behind him Sylvain and Allsopp scrapped for second, Liam taking the place by 0.6 seconds in race three, while race four saw Sylvain second with Sawyer and Allsopp scrapping throughout for third.
Even closer than the CB500 title scrap is the open 500 class where George Bedford scored four wins at the August meeting to edge a single point ahead of John Mclaren
The other championship with a single point margin at the top is the pre-injection 600 class where Rob Mawbey overtook Aaron Staniforth at the top of the table last month. This class saw Mike Horberry beat Mawbey by the smallest measurable margin of one-thousandth of a second in Sunday’s first race, and stretch that margin to 0.036 of a second in the final race. The previous day it had been Mawbey ahead by seven-hundredths in race two . These results drew Mawbey into a single point lead over long-time leader Aaron Staniforth.
Kyle Abell had an unbeaten record in the Rookies championship up until the August meeting, but a crash in the first race put an end to that run .Andrew Bird and Abell had been swapping places at the front with Chris Taylor closing in on the seventh lap when Abell crashed bringing out the red flag giving the victory to Bird from Taylor, who went on to win the second race from David Kortegas by 0.7 seconds. Kyle was back on track on Sunday, but not in his usual winning form, and his championship lead has shrunk to eight points over Liam Price in the 600 class. Kortegas is 80 points aheadof Stephen Watson in the 1000 Rookies class
George Davies and James Ingham shared the spoils in the Twins races in August, two wins apiece, but they are competing for different titles, with George 68 points ahead of Thomas Bradshaw in the Supertwins championship, while Ingham is more than a hundred points up on John Mclaren in the Mini twins class, and could very well take the title today.
Freddie Oakley heads the 450 table but George Bedford has been rapidly closing the gap which now stands at twenty points, while in the 125 class John Lea’s nine wins have put him in an almost unassailable lead – one win today will bring John his third different EMRA title.