The first round of the NG Racing, Completely Motorbikes 2023, championship hit the tarmac of the Brands Hatch INDY Circuit in what turned out to be a weekend of mixed weather and mixed fortunes.
Saturday was a dry cloudy day and the 1.2-mile short circuit lived up to its frantic pace of sub 50second laps in the Powerbike and Open classes with NG Champion, Max Symonds and Bob Colins the pace setters along with former ACU 250 champion, Jim Hind looking to have his say too.
The first Bluebell lakes Powerbike race was a taste of what was going to happen over the weekend with Symonds R1 Yamaha, Colins Honda Fireblade almost glued together for 12 laps but Max with the controlled race to win by 0.75 seconds Shane Faber third his first outing on his new Suzuki GSXR.
The Phoniex Open was a similar story Max starting to get the R1 moving and opening up a 3 second gap at the flag over Collins with Jim Hind after leading until half race and then dropped off the pace in third, Shane Faber took a big tumble at Paddock hill bend while battling with George Edwards he was ok but the bike too damaged to carry on.
Sunday arrived and so did the rain! but a stiff breeze was pushing the clouds along with a promise of a dryer afternoon.
Powerbikes was the Collins and Symonds duel again Bob just heading Max by 0.23 seconds with the AFB Motorcycles pairing of Michael Blank and Chris Pope 3rd and 4th.
Race 3 drama started on the warmup lap with Collins falling into the gravel at Clearways, as did quite a few more on Sunday, leaving Symonds with an unhindered run to victory, over 12 seconds, with Blank and Pope on the podium.
The Phoniex was the duo of Symonds and Collins never more than 0.5 of a second apart for 9 laps, Max again taking the win from Bob with Ricky Elder finally getting the R6 Yamaha on the move for 3rd.
Race 3 was the race in the Collins garage to get the Fireblade (and Bob) cleaned up repaired and fit for the last Open, which they did and with a track starting to show a dry line made an inspired tyre choice of intermediates over the rest of the grid's wets, although early laps were all Max with Collins tyres up to race pace took over the lead and won by 5 seconds from Ricky Elder and a slightly struggling Symmonds.
IMS OPEN 600 was looking very much like the Dan Cooper Motorsport, George Edwards clean sweep after a dominant race 1 win by over 11 seconds from Tom Weedon and Ricky Elder
But in race 2 Edwards disappeared into the gravel at Clearways along with 3 other bikes which left Ricky Elder to head tom Weedon to the flag by 16 seconds
Race 3 would see Edwards line up 24th on the grid after some frantic work from the DCM team to get the bike turned around, jump start of the meeting was Mark Strutt who came from the 5th row to lead into Paddock before the front row moved!!But again, it was Elder who charged off to win by over 8 seconds from Robert Cresswel and George Edwards who found out after the meeting had a fractured arm.
Other winners were Chris Edwards with 3 wins in the Suzuki Bandit Challenge, Carl Smalley also 3 wins on his return to racing in the Ducati Desmo due class after 4 years away, Shaun Hennessy on his FP3 Yamaha 2 wins and a second back on form and a triple for Stacey Killworth in the hugely competitive Mini Twin’s
Words : Martin Bennett , Commentator NG Racing
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