Thursday September 19, 2019 at 1:20pm
The final round of the 2019 ACU Championships takes place this weekend at Santa Pod Raceway. Only Comp Bike has been decided and that title went to Louis Davies. Top Fuel Bike. Reigning and multi-time ACU Top Fuel Bike Champion Steve Woollatt has a 15 point lead in the championship over Neil Midgley coming into this event. Woollatt has a new engine combination and reached the semi-finals at the European Finals recently. Midgley went one better and was runner up in SuperTwins at the European Finals. Allan Davies is third 220 points behind and if the top two have problems Davies could win. Al Smith made his debut on Phil Baimbridge three cylinder powered Top Fuel Bike at the European Finals and reached the final, but didn’t make the call. Smith ran a career personal best of 6.275 and could be a dark horse to win the event. Nick Milburn will debut his new Top Fuel bike, which is the ex Eric Teboul bike. Funny Bike. Kars Van Den Belt leads the championship by 445 points ahead of Dave Batcheler who has had a great season riding Phil Crossley’s bike. They are the only riders who can win the title. Both Dave Peters and Phil Crossley have not had much luck recently so they would like to finish on a good note. 2018 ACU Funny Bike Champion Lorcan Parnell makes his first appearance of the year. Green Light Nationals winner Kevin Osman will be looking to improve the performance of his modified Funny Bike. Thomas Joswig will be racing his new bike for the first time at Santa Pod. Comp Bike. Louis Davies has won the ACU Comp Bike Championship and will use this event to test some new parts. The race for second place is between four riders and there are 210 points between second and fifth. Paul Hambridge winner of round four of the Green Light Nationals is ahead of 2018 champion Margot Schmidt, Valentijn Sandtke and Phil Leamon. Chris Neary has also entered. Ian Burns may run in the class because he is the only Pro Stock Bike entered for the event. Super Street Bike. Newly crowned European FIM Super Street Bike Champion Steve Venables has 420 points lead over Garry Bowe who is 20 points ahead of Graham Balchin who ran 6.97 at the European Finals. Dave Smith is 15 points further back. Daniel Lencses is another six-second runner. European FIM Super Street Bike Championship runner up Alex Hope will be hoping to for better luck and brother Mark who ran personal best 7.28 is hoping to go quicker. Also racing is Mark Dainty, Chris Reed, Dave Thomas and Knut Moller. Report by Steve Moxley.