This Is Guernsey

John Damarell (15) on his motocross bike leads Jon Le Page on his slider out of the ‘wet bend’. (Picture by Andrew Le Poidevin, 0560681)

GUERNSEY’S sand-race season finally got into full swing with a programme of races for all classes at the second meeting of the year, although on a very rough beach.

For the adult bike riders, the event was different from past years in that five of the races, although held as scratch races with sliders and motocross riders racing together, were in fact counting towards the Pealing Carey Handicap Trophy.

Before the meeting all riders had been handicapped on a golf-type system so that the slowest started from a position of 40 points, while the fastest were on nil. That meant that while the first and second places were going to different slider riders, the motocross bikers were more consistent in gaining points with lower finishing positions.

At the end of the day it appeared that the handicapping favoured the motocross riders, because they took the first three places quite comfortably and perhaps the handicapping will have to be adjusted before the next handicap meeting later in the year.

For the other two races, the bikes were split so that the sliders did only four lap races, while the motocross boys were given eight.

Four cadets who appeared, three aged eight and one seven, were given the opportunity to practise both on their smaller track and the full course before deciding which suited them better and it was decided to use the former.

Dean Chandler, from Alderney, was out on a MK3 version of his GCS sand-racer since each year, as he grows bigger, his bike has to be increased in size too.

Although Chandler managed a clean sweep of wins, he was at times being pushed by the Rive twins and he had to race hard to take the lead from Joshua Lambourne in the final race, which was turned into a handicap to make things more interesting.

In the racing-car class, things were not running smoothly as after practice Colin Bridle, in a Cosworth-powered Skoda, was out with a water leak and Trevor Le Page had to seek the clerk of the course’s permission to leave the beach to weld up a broken frame.

He returned just in time to take third place in the handicap race, but came back to the pits with a broken drive shaft.

Ricky Le Cheminant, in a single-seater shaped Kawasaki Swift 1,100cc, managed to break the throttle cable during pre-event checks, so work was being done on his car for the first half of the meeting to replace this part.

Finally, he was allowed out on his own to get in his practice laps, but somehow managed to do two on the outside of the course before a marshal could steer him in the correct direction.

The saloon-car classes were still short of entries, with only the addition of Doug Le Fevre and John Le Page to the programme.

However, Simon Carre has now changed from a Peugeot special to an automatic Prelude.