Winterton crowned King of the Beach again

SPECTATORS making the most of a bright afternoon on the beach meant the course was set out lower down in the latest sand-racing meet, giving long straights but very tight hairpin-like corners which caught out both bike riders and car drivers. 0486417
For the bike boys this meeting contained one of the showpiece races. Having started in the 70s, the King of the Beach title was up for grabs.
Once again the locals lost out as Stoke rider Daniel Winterton took the honours from Dave Cleal.
For only the second time this season Anthony Bougourd was competing, gaining a first and two second places in the championship races, but he was not in contention for the main event race.
Young Jersey rider Joe Bishop was perhaps trying a bit too hard on his smaller 350cc machine to keep up with the 500cc bikes as he managed to drop his bike at least three times during the afternoon.
With it being the middle of the summer holidays, there were only five junior riders out for this meeting and having lost out to the smaller bikes at the last couple of meetings, the Rive twins have reverted back to their 85cc Hondas to try to bring back their advantage.
In the end Josh Lambourne still had the best results of the afternoon with the other riders all sharing the rest of the spoils with Billy Russell taking one winner’s spot and Jarod Carrington his first third place in championship race.
The juniors’ last race of the afternoon is usually a scratch race but the riders made it into a handicap one.
However, they gave Carrington just a little too much of a lead so he took his first win of the season.
With an entry of 14 saloon cars the racing was sure to be fast and furious, but come the end of the afternoon about half had or were having problems.
Mark Ozanne in the modified 4WD Subaru was out with a broken gearbox thus leaving Paul Guymer in a road-going standard Subaru to battle with John Le Page’s Audi Quattro in this class.
The two women drivers were out in classes of their own so the real battles were in the other two production car classes, which both saw increased entries.
With 1,400-1,800 points leader John Dean away, his car had been loaned to Nigel Ozanne so as to take points away from his nearest rivals, thus leaving the battle for runner-up spot to be contended by Eric Trump’s Rover and Paul Stanford’s smoky Toyota.
Meanwhile, ex bike rider and current sand race chairman Paul van der Tang took to the sands in Bill Cohu’s Honda CRX and Mike Bichard finally made his appearance in a Mitsubishi Carisma.
In the larger class, Shaun Leigh held the upper hand from Phil Brehaut’s automatic Honda while Doug Le Feuvre has still not sorted the V-Tec on his Prelude.
Making a return to this class was Jack Sanders in a Rover 620, but a broken radiator ended his day.
Van der Tang’s lack of experience came to his advantage when he was given a healthy start to the handicap race, which meant no one was able to catch him.
The closest racing was for third spot with five cars exiting the final bend on the last lap together for the sprint to the line, which went in Ozanne’s favour.
In the racing car class it was a battle between little and large, little being Simon Carre’s 600cc Z-Bird, large being Barry Le Prevost’s 5000cc Dulon.
It was little that came out on top in the only two races that these cars completed.