Sunday 3rd April will see the start of the seven round British Sidecarcross championship being run at top level tracks as far afield as Cumbria, Kent, Suffolk and Somerset. This year in addition to the MAXXIS sponsorship for the main championship Hadrian Marine will be sponsoring the highly successful Experts championship. This class was trialled last year and proved to be very popular and it is hoped now it is established it will continue to grow.
The addition of the Experts championship last year raised the number of entries at virtually every round with the last two rounds being close to a full house. This year the number of registered riders is an all time high of thirty and with the possibility of wild card riders on top entries should continue to be well into the thirties. At the time of writing it was known that the opening round at Asham Woods nr Frome in Somerset had attracted an entry of thirty six but a list of riders was not available at the time.
Defending champions, Stuart Brown / Josh Chamberlain, will be hoping to continue where they left off in 2015 when they were only beaten once in the sixteen race series and even then they only dropped to second place. Their pre season training in Holland has been very encouraging with good rides in Lochem & Oss leaving them currently third in the Dutch championship. Hoping to go one better after last year’s second place are Brett Wilkinson / Steve Kirwin. This year they have changed chassis from WHT to WSP and their training results have been very promising already. They showed last year they are very quick off the line and if they can maintain that pace for longer they will certainly give Brown something to think about.
Having finished fourth for the last two years Nick Jarvis will be hoping to go at least one place higher this year. Over the winter following the retirement of passenger Dan Chamberlain he has teamed up with Swedish passenger Christian Nilsson. He has also changed from KTM power to Husqvarna.
Leading the Irish challenge this year is Neil Campbell with new passenger Craig Parmenter. Others to look out for are last year’s winner of the Experts championship, Tony Grahame / Harley Lloyd and the vastly experienced Paul Pelling / Chris Pannell.
The championship kicks off at Asham Woods, Leighton on 3
rd April.