Sunday 6th June is the date of the second round of the East Midland Racing association championships at Mallory Park, and a total of 198 competitors means full entry in almost every class and suggests that everyone’s leathers have finally dried out after all the April showers we never had turned up at Mallory in May for round one.
The main events are the two Chase Accident Repairs/King Dick Tools/Dunlop Mallory Trophy, in which two former national Supersport champions head the entry. Luke Stapleford and Billy McConnell are no strangers to winning races at Mallory, Luke in his years before becoming national champion and moving on to a couple of successful seasons in the World Supersport championship, while Billy is a past winner of the Race of the Year. These two are facing the challenge of local racer and national Superstock front-runner Leon Jeacock on the Buildbase Suzuki, 2019 EMRA Buildbase Mallory Trophy champion and Allcomers champion Louis Dawson, who heads the 2021 championship, jointly with Andrew Fisher, Superstock runners Tom Ward and Tom Oliver and 2019 Rookie and 600 EMRA champion Luke Burnett. The same riders will also be racing in the JHP Ducati Coventry Allcomers races, making a total of forty laps of pre-BSB practice for the national championship contenders.
The best races of the day in May were the Binley Woods Carsales Minitwins events, in which John Bolsover and Darren Corkett fought every inch of the way . Bolsover led for the first three laps in race one, Corkett taking over for the next two, then giving way on lap six, retaking the lead on lap seven, Bolsover getting back ahead for the next two laps only for Corkett to snatch the win on the final lap by 0.7 seconds , The second race went to Bolsover after Corkett pursued him closely throughout, and the two share the lead in the championship.
The CB500 races are always close, and it came as a bit of a shock to see the same man win all three races in May – Richard Blunt possibly gaining some advantage from the fact that the three riders scrapping over second were getting in each others’ way, and Sam Palfreyman, Roger Neep and Jamie Page are all likely to battle again alongside Wayne Sutton who was catching Blunt in the later stages of the Open 500 race and had closed to within a second at the flag
The best individual performance of the May meeting was that of Sam Leach who won the first Midland Superbike Performance Rookies race by more than half a minute, and then won the second race by an even bigger margin even though the race was cut to five laps – how fast will he go when it’s dry ? Sam also came second to Douglas Edmondson in the Open 600 race.
Aaron staniforth won both Pre-injection races in May, but Steve Brittain has a long history of wins in this class and should be back at the front .
The Alamo Racing Sound of Music championship is an innovation for 2021, being a class for two-strokes, for those of us who can remember when nearly all racing bikes were two-strokes, and Alan Moreton took a double win on his production RG500, and will face competition from former EMRA 600 champion John Lea’s TZ250, the similar machine of Colin Sleigh, Paul Whiting’s TZ350, and the 250 Honda of Simon Lehane,
Stu Poulton and John Adamson’s 350LCs were victorious in the wet in May, but Glenn Gray’s 1100 Yamaha, and the 1100 Suzukis of Paul Johnson and John Nicklin will give them a good contest on a dry track.
Evan Pendrill and Harrison Dessoy on the Moto 3 Hondas they will use in the British Talent Cup head the 125-450 entry with Jamie Hanks-Elliott on a 400 Kawasaki , a couple of 390 KTMs, various junior supersport machines and a 450 Honda.