News
April 25th race report
Luton & District Motorcycle Club
Moto X Event at Toddington 25 April 2011 S.Midland Centre ACU
Report by Nigel Morris
pics: please credit to Photos:motoxphotos.co.uk
The Luton Moto-X Club held their second event of the year at Old Park Farm, Toddington on Easter Monday. After a long spell of dry and warm weather the conditions were hard and dusty for the 115 entrants in mixed groups for expert, junior, over 40 and over 50 year old riders.
The club were highly delighted to welcome back, for his second visit, Red Bull MX Pro Champion Neville Bradshaw from South Africa. Neville is fighting to regain fitness following a hand injury and added the Luton event to his programme of recovery. Needless to say he still proved to be impossible to beat despite the efforts of Luton regulars Dale Raynor and Michael McClurg. Bradshaw won all three expert races in fine style and thrilled the crowd with a high speed demonstration of all the motocross skills.
The top riders from the junior riders qualifying heats join the experts in the main finals to make up a full grid of forty riders. This format is popular with the crowd and the riders themselves, especially the juniors, as it gives them good experience of the faster pace necessary to compete at expert level consistently. Rheece Wharton, from Stevenage, proved he had the pace to mix it with experts and in the first final was running in seventh position. It was too much to expect him to maintain this against such accomplished company and sure enough a couple of mistakes was enough to drop him back through the field. Eventually the highest junior finisher overall was Jamie West who was able to squeeze into the top ten.
Best of the local riders again had to be Tony Leishman from Dunstable. Riding his two stroke 250cc Yamaha Tony won the Over 40 year olds group, came second in a junior heat (although he chose not to contest the finals) and had a terrific crowd pleasing battle with Stuart Scott for the win in the Clubs Workers Championship race.
The latter being a keenly contested event, which runs the whole season long, for the riders who help to run the meetings. That is they help to build the track and all facilities on the Saturday prior to race day. Naturally these helpers are local to the venue and include the likes of Adam Collins, Steve Trodd, David Holes, David Willis and Darren Flitney, who all hail from Luton. These riders provide some great entertainment throughout the season and thoroughly enjoy their involvement with the club as well as the extra race that they get through helping out.
Motocross without doubt is an exciting sport and this was brought home quite clearly by young Alex Fountain from Buckinghamshire. Alex lost control of his machine along a bumpy straight and fell off the back of it. Approaching a turn he landed in the track perfectly ok, his machine cart-wheeled and went through the wrecking ropes, which slowed it down, before it continued on it’s way, finally colliding with the commentary tower! Certainly the “hottest” part of a chilly day for those officials on top of the 3m platform.
NEXT EVENT is on Sunday 29th May at Toddington, just off J13 of M1.
Luton and District Motorcycle Club
Right then everybody the new year is apon us and we have another season of motocross to look forward to. If you raced with us last year we hope you had noticed the time and effort we have invested in the club and the track, we are always striving to progress with the track, club, running of the meeting aswell as the atmosphere that everyone enjoys on race day!
We will not be sitting back in 2011 and we be improving on our succes in 2010 and we look forward to having you on board with us for what will be another great year of motocross at the Old Park farm venue.
Click here to return to Home page