DIRT DIGGERS –

THE 2021 BASH, SIDE-WAYS AND SILLY!

I KNOW, I KNOW, IT DOESN’T SEEM TEN MINUTES (OR A FEW ISSUES ANYWAY) SINCE WE RAN AN ARTICLE ON DIRT DIGGERS, THE FLATTRACK EVENT THAT YOU CAN ENTER ON, AS THEY PUT IT, BIKES INAPPROPRIATE TO GO FLATTRACK RACING ON, BUT THAT WAS THE 2020 EVENT, AND THIS'S THE 2021 ONE.

Besides which, as you’ll know if you’ve been, it’s such a great event that it’s worth shouting about, y’know?

The brainchild of ex-BSH and AWoL editor Odgie and his oppo’ Richard Hollingsworth as a way of getting more and more people interested in what is an excellent way of getting involved in bike racing on a tight budget back in 2018, it’s grown over the years, and No 4, this year’s event, was another triumph. Okay, so due to the coronafeckinvirus the numbers of spectators at Scunthorpe* Raceway were down as they weren’t able to encourage folk to just come and watch, but those who did turn up, including meself and the good lady, were treated to a real spectacle, we really were.

If you’ve not seen flat-track before, and a lot of people haven’t, then the first thing you have to understand is that it isn’t speedway. Although speedway’s an American (some say Australian) invention, it’s become, over the years, thought of as a predominantly European sport that

uses purpose-built, very lightweight, hardtail-framed, four-stroke, single-cylinder 500cc bikes running on methanol, whereas flat-track’s a less rigidly defined class that uses, primarily, four-stroke twin-cylinder bikes (although the legendary Kenny

Roberts did run a four-cylinder two-stroke TZ750 engine, of which he famously said: “They don’t pay me enough to ride that thing”) adapted from production machines (most famously Harley’s XR750, and BSA and Triumph twins).

Not everyone can afford an old Brit, or a rare-as-rocking-horse-excreta ‘Arley though, so Odgie and Richard decided to make a race event that’d allow folk to do as they did in the heyday of the grassroots British motorcycle sport – turn up on the bike they own, tape up the headlight, remove the mudguards, race it, and ride home.

They also opened it up to bikes that were’t traditional flat-trackers too; yes, people could, and do, enter Brit singles and twins, but they can also use converted ‘crossers and supermotos and, more relevant to us, pretty much anything else they liked too from C50s to FireBlades, including choppers, and Dirt Diggers was born.

It’s an action-packed day; there were something like 50 races (qualifiers and finals) of four laps, and a whole host of different classes that meant that, with the exception of trikes, anyone could, pretty much, race anything. There’re classes for pukka flat-track bikes, vintage bikes, scooters, mini-motos, and more, but the ones we’d predominantly gone to see were the inappropriate road bikes and, of course, the choppers.

Now, because of the cross-over, most of, but not all, the choppers also entered the inappropriate class too, as did some of the vintage bikes, and that meant that the starting grid for those races was wonderfully eclectic – an XJ750 Seca lined up against an ER5 Kawasaki, Super Dreams, classic dirt bikes, scooters, a GS500 chop, and a very quick hardtailed Honda Dominator. The Dommie’s owned by BSH’s old mate Shaun ‘Dr Death’ Gemmell, who’s had a few quite mad rats/customs featured in magazines over the years, and he’s a bit good on it… actually, that’s an understatement – he’s lightning on it! He’s actually beaten Guy Martin and Neil Hodgson at Dirtquake (twice in Guy’s case)

in the Chopper class (and it’s whispered that Mr M has declined to enter since because of it), and he pretty much dominated (sorry, bad pun) every race he was in save for one that had to be restarted several times after crashes when he got arm-pump and had to back right off.

Of course, with a rep’ like that, you’d expect him to do well in the Chopper races and, indeed, he did. Entry numbers for the choppers were down a little this year – there were six to start with, but Richard Sharpe crashed his Victory early on in the day, hurting his wrist, and that left five: Shaun on the Dommie, Scott (on Shaun’s other bike) on the Rotax, Pete Stansfield on his old school Triumph, Fred on his GS500, and Warren on a wonderfully mad GSX750 chop with massive apes(!). Shaun pretty much lead each one from start to finish, taking a much wider line from all the others that afforded him more grip, but the rest scrapped it out between them, and there’s something just so cool about watching an out-anout rat chopper and an old Brit hardtail fighting out on a dirt oval with a loony with monstrous ‘bars, foot-out, scrabbling for traction, roostertails of dirt flying from their back wheels.

For me, the Chopper races were the highlight of the day, but mention also has to be made of the brilliantly silly mini-moto race. Another really eclectic grid, it had traditional mini-motos, pit bikes, a converted mobility scooter, and a pushbike with an engine and a large toy dog under a blanket in a basket on the front (the rider, as far as I know, didn’t have, however, a long glowing finger, and I don’t think I saw him on his mobile once…), and began with a Le Mans-style start where the riders run to their machines and start them (not always successfully). Some of them had coloured smoke canisters attached, and it very soon was chaos, and I have no idea who won, who came second, who came third, or what the hell was going on. Class!

And as for Odgie, the man who (jointly) started all this? Bloody hell, he’s fast! He won the British and Vintage Flat-Track classes on his home-built 1966 BSA A65, with 750 conversion, and was holding his own against much, much younger competition machinery in others too – very impressive as, as I’m sure he won’t mind me saying, he’s no spring chicken these days. It’s funny, having followed his adventures over the years, I knew he was a good rider, but I didn’t know he was that good!