The sixth round of the sidecarcross world championships was held at Iffendic in north west France and previous experience had shown that it favoured those outfits with the sidecar on the right so the four British crews would have to work even harder than usual to come away with a serious points total.
Before the meeting started everyone was trying to understand last Friday's FIM press release saying that Bax and Willemsen had been disqualified from the results at the last French GP at Chaumont because they had both failed a fuel test. In addition to them being disqualified and their points removed all other riders in those two races were moved up accordingly. This now meant Stuart Brown was still in fourth place but only two points behind Willemsen.
In the qualifying races Brown / Millard, Foden / Grahame and Kinge / Humphrey all made it through but Wilkinson / Chamberlain who had crashed earlier in the day didn't make it. Despite Wilkinson still a bit sore from his recently broken collarbone and Chamberlain being bruised from the morning’s crash they made it through from the last chance.
In the first of Sunday's races Bax took the lead from the start and never looked back. Local favourite Giraud / Mucenieks got a bad start in seventeenth place but worked his way through to second place with four laps to go. Two laps later his race was over when a stone punctured his oil cooler. Brown started in fourteenth and came through to finish tenth. Wilkinson, starting from the second row, started a few places behind Brown and finished fifteenth. Neither Foden or Kinge made in to the points scoring places.
The second race saw Willemsen take the lead from Bax and Giraud but his lead only lasted just over one lap when Bax and Giraud both got past. Brown started in tenth but dropped to fourteenth when his goggles broke. Wilkinson took advantage of this and passed him but in the latter stages lost power from his Mega engine. Bax won from Giraud with Willemsen third. Brown was thirteenth and Wilkinson fourteenth. Kinge stopped with chain problems and Foden stopped with a broken steering damper.
The next round is in the deep sand at Lommel in Belgium next weekend.