ACU British MMX Championship

20th July- Blaxhall Pitts

Round 5 of the British MMX Championship was held at Blaxhall Pits and MotoXtreme Kawasaki travelled to the sandy track near Ipswich hoping for a good result after the disapointment of the previous round when Mark Hucklebridge crashed in Race 1 and took no further part in the action at Hawkstone Park.

Things didnt go well though, with the sand track cutting up badly from the start of proceedings Huck was struggling with his hand injury from the crash at the previous round straight away and could only post a disapointing 21st position in qualifying.

Despite the pain, Huck went down to the line for the start of Race 1 and he was in midpack through the first cormer. He was trying hard to pull himself up the order and made it up to 10th before deciding to retire from the race after 5 laps because the track was now getting so rough he was finding it too hard to keep his injured hand on the handlebars.

Dissapointingly that was the end of the day for Huck and he now finds himself down in 8th position in the championship standings. Wayne Smith of Pioneer Yamaha clinched the title at Blaxhall with a round to spare, Bryan Mackenzie now lies second overall on his Twisted 7 Kawasaki with Ray Rowson of PAR Honda in third.

In the Under 21 class MotoXtreme had a new representative in the shape of James Dodd, a former national schoolboy champion, the 19 year old from Winscombe near Weston-super-Mare has been riding a Honda but persistant mechanical problems have forced him to change machinery and he is now looking for a fresh start with a Kawasaki.

Qualifying didn't go badly considering he had only ridden the bike once before and James set the 17th fastest lap time. A good start in Race 1 saw James in 5th position as the riders went into the first corner, but a huge crash involving 15 riders out of the 40 starters left James on the floor and tangled up with the fencing, after sorting himself out and getting his bike restarted he was already 2 laps down on the leaders, he rejoined the race in dead last and had made his way up to 34th by the half way stage but at this point he decided to retire and save energy ready for the second race. Another good start saw him in the top ten into the first corner and this time he got through it safely and was running in 9th position after a lap but he got caught out on the difficult sandy surface and a crash saw him drop down the order to 26th, he fought hard though and was showing some good speed to get up to 20th position and with 3 laps remaining he claimed another position and would finish the race in 19th for 2 championship points.

Report and Picture by Ade Threasher