QBE BSFoS
The Post Classic Racing Club of NSW went out on a limb to present an amazing line up of international riders on mouth watering bikes for their eighth running of this annual tribute to the late Barry Sheene, and were rewarded with a bumper crowd who enjoyed excellent racing. After a wet start to official proceedings on Friday, even the weather was kind and the track was dry for the weekend’s tight schedule of events. As has been the case in the past few years, numerous accidents and incidents caused delays and a late finish on Sunday, but officials worked tirelessly to ensure the program ran basically to schedule, even though races needed to be reduced in laps. The most serious accident sent Queenslander Ian Lovell to hospital with a broken pelvis and ribs after he locked the front brake of Geoff Clatworthy’s Norton to avoid ramming Kevin Schwantz and was catapulted over the handlebars at high speed. Veteran Lyell Williamson was brought down in one of the last of Sunday’s races and hospitalised with broken ribs and foot injuries. The international troupe staged a series of ‘clashes’, and while they were not serious races, the stars put on a great show of close dicing on their priceless machines. Kevin Schwantz and Jeremy McWilliams were both competing in other events, Schwantz clean-sweeping the Period 3 500 class on Ken McIntosh’s Manx Norton and finishing fourth in the main Barry Sheene Top 50. That prize went to Victorian Chas Hern on the TRex Racing Bimota YB5, winning two of the four rounds to edge out (by a single point) Paul Byrne’s McIntosh Suzuki, with Dean Oughtred third on his Suzuki GSXR1100.