BOB SMITH SPRING CUP SCARBOROUGH
A mixture of recent classics and hand-built pure racers made their mark at the Bob Smith Spring Cup.
1. Dave Bell put on a brilliant display on the 1000cc-engined Yamaha OW01.YOU can see how hard he was riding to win, and set fastest laps on both Saturday and Sunday, by the hole in the fairing which has been rubbed away.
2. Michael Hand’s race one on Sunday saw him finish third, after crashing the 600 on Saturday. He started the F1 a little sore, got a great start and was lying second after lap one, unfortunately the rear brake decided to seize up half way round lap two which resulted in him having to retire. 3. Phil Stead had problems all Saturday with one of the cylinders running really lean, which caused it to stop twice during the day. But after a full rebuild on Saturday night till 1am he found the problem, it was the crank seal letting air in! Phil had to start at the back of the grid on Sunday because of missing Saturday’s qualifying. He finished second in the lightweight and was battling with Craig Neve for second in the classic Superbike when on the last lap he ran out of fuel. He set a new lap record in that race.
4. A great fourth on the Saturday for Gary Graves, followed by a steady fifth on the Sunday on the Rob Wilson-built Kawasaki ZXR-750 which was the first Classic Race that the Scarborough regular has ridden – on a bike that was only picked up a couple of days before the meeting. Out against the modern bikes in the open races neither rider nor bike disgraced, beating modern 1000cc machines.
5. Superb performance by the Moto3 Star Joe Thompson on ayamahatz250 in the Lightweight Races. He won both races over the weekend, setting fastest lap in both and was the talk of the town on Sunday night as he was getting his elbow down Moto3 style at the exit of the Esses, now called Ago’s.
6. Not a weekend to remember for Phil Harvey. He retired from both Saturday and Sunday’s Lightweight Races.
7. In many people’s eyes the star of the meeting was Morgan Govignon. His spectacular style on the Boxer BMW won him many fans.the machine was prepared by three students for an engineering project and finished fifth on the Saturday but missed the Sunday Classic Race as Morgan had to head home to France via Hull so couldn’t factor in the Sunday event.