A family affair at Collie
HCMCWA Club Championship Rd 1 & Collie TT
1 April, 2018 – Collie Motorplex, WA
On a perfect autumn day 90+ solo riders and 11 sidecar teams gathered for Round 1 of the 2018 HCMCWA Club Championships, which incorporated the Collie TT. With 28 races scheduled on the day Race Control ran a tight ship and got through the day in a comfortable and well-organised manner. It was also the day that Scott Topping returned to racing in WA following the fire that devastated their Bullsbrook home while Scott and his father Paul were in NZ. The family lost everything in the fire and Scott’s return was due to the generosity of Chris & Lorene Kirby and Bob Hull who loaned him bikes to enable him to compete. Brian Richardson is another rider who overcame adversity to compete at the round when his two race bikes were stolen; one was found via some information received anonymously by phone and another when it was spotted “For Sale” on EBay. On the second lap of the first “Modern” race Leigh Boujos (Yamaha R6) set a new outright lap record with a 45.735 second lap eclipsing the previous record held by Aaiden Coote of 46.262 seconds since 20/11/2011. Congratulation Leigh!
The class I concentrated on for Round 1 was the P4-350/500/750 & Unlimited – P5-250/350/500/750. So with eight races within each of the three six-lap events there was a ton of action. MFR (Mercer Family Racing) is father Christopher, son David and daughter Kathleen; a true family affair who compete in this class and in many disciplines of motorcycle racing in WA and are great stalwarts of the HCMCWA. Race 1 saw Steven Crane (Yamaha LC350) take the outright win from Brian Richardson (Yamaha LC350) with Chris Gammidge (Honda CB350) rounding out the top three. Crane took out the P5 Forgotten Era Junior division, with David Mercer (1981 Yamaha LC250) topping the Lightweight. Ben Barker (Yamaha RD400) topped the Senior division. Paul Pickford (Kawasaki Z650B) won the Forgotten Era Formula 750. In the P4 Post Classic Junior Chris Gammidge was the winner whilst Bob Hull (Honda CB500) took top spot in the P4 Post Classic Senior. The second race was identical to the first with the exception that in the Forgotten Era Formula 750 Stephen Corsini took the win. The final race saw a change on the top step with Richardson taking a hard fought win from Crane with Gammidge again taking the minor podium place. All the other places were the same as race two.
Full race and overall results are available on Natsoft. Round two of the six-round Club Championship will be held at the Collie circuit on the weekend of the 26th – 27th May.