The fourth round of the Maxxis British Sidecar cross Championship took place at the Dean Moor motocross park in Cumbria just to the north of the Lake district. Although the weather forced the Iveston and Satley club to stop Saturday’s racing early Sunday was mostly dry until the last race of the day.
In timed practice Brown / Millard were quickest, nearly two seconds ahead of Moulds / Kirwin. In third place was Wilkinson / Chamberlain who during the week before had made the decision to stop using Mega engines and reverted to the 700cc Zabel.
Under blue skies and some sunshine, the gate dropped for race one. Sadly for Emma Moulds / Niki Adair they only managed half the start straight when they were tipped over. Their day was over but fortunately they both got away with just bruising.
Wilkinson took the holeshot from Gary Moulds with Brown in third. On the first lap Moulds had problems and lost one complete lap rejoining just in front of the race leaders. Wilkinson held the lead for seven laps but Brown had made his intentions clear for a number of laps that he was determined to take the lead which he did on lap eight and went on to take his first win of the day. Kinge / Humphrey were third and Hodges / Ide, current leaders of the expert’s class, were fourth.
The second race was pretty uneventful at the front with Brown leading for the duration with Wilkinson second, Moulds third and Kinge fourth. Campbell / Parmenter came up from eighth to finish sixth but that was to be the end of his day’s racing because of an injury to his thumb. Pelling / Pannel and Foden / Grahame had a good scrap for the whole race, changing places twice with Pelling finishing just ahead in ninth place.
As the riders came to the line for the final race of the day the rain started but although it made the track quite slippery that was as bad as it got. Brown again took the holeshot from Wilkinson with Moulds third which were the positions they held for the whole race. Kinge came through from tenth to finish fourth with Pelling fifth.
Brown now leads the championship by twenty-three points from Wilkinson with Moulds a further fifty-one points behind in third. In the expert’s class Hodges leads Moulds by fourteen points with Oldfield third but a massive ninety points behind the leaders.
The next round will be at Little Loveney Hall, Wakes Colne on 3
rd September hosted by the Halstead club.
Report and Photos by Chris Helm