Another action-packed race report from our scooter racing guru Paul Green, time for Round 5 at Anglesey.
The BSSO race series made the first of its two visits to Wales this year by racing at the very popular and picturesque Anglesey circuit. This is a fabulous riders’ circuit with a bit of everything to test the riders as they enter the second half of this y
Standard Geared (Group 4)
A few more riders joined the fray this time but Darren Conneely now has the Replay scooter well sorted, being the only scooter racing on a ported BGM RT barrel. Conneely took three solid wins from championship leader Chris Geyton on the SRP scooter. Geyton has been riding brilliantly this year and built a good points lead with his solid reliability in the early season, leaving Conneely a lot to do to overhaul him. Jason Metivier has lots of experience and has built himself a new stock race scooter. He achieved two third places after race-long battles following a non-finish in the first race of the weekend. Veteran Dan Lewis had solid finishes all weekend on his home-developed bike.
Production Class
Still the biggest and most competitive class overall, but the very talented Lee Bamber is now very much becoming the man to beat. Bamber had never ridden a geared Lambretta until this year, having made his name riding automatics, but it seems he can actually ride anything fast! Having qualified on pole he maximised
that to take three wins but was pushed all the way with Justin Price, Graham Tatton and Mikey Bonett all pushing him hard and taking a second place each. Graham Tatton is pushing his Scootopia teammate Bonett more and more as the season progresses and although Bamber has edged slightly ahead on points the Scootopia riders are ready to pounce on any mistake or issue Bamber has in the remaining races this year. Chiselspeed’s Chris Cook enjoyed three very close races with veteran Stuart Day in the mid-pack showing again just how close and competitive this class is.
Scomadi Cup
This new class has stalled a little in terms of entries but the appearance of Stephen Graves substituting for the injured Gary Peacock has been a highlight with Graves getting straight down to business with other trio of wins over the weekend with over a second quicker lap times which is unusual for the class and shows the natural talent that Graves has. Championship leader is Zack Tingle; he took three second places to Graves to limit the damage to his current championship lead but will need to keep Graves in check in the remaining races to be in a position to win the Scomadi on offer to the championship winner this year.
Super Scooter Geared Specials
The old Group 6 class is still competitive, with a variety of machines from full bodied specials to old style cut-down machines like the Team DSC special of Steve Wright who is in the best form of his long racing career and really enjoying the benefits of development work and assistance from Team DSC’s Darren Scott which saw him take two second places and a third place from the weekend to bolster his points tally. But it was JB Tuning’s Mikey Bonett who was on great form on the Casa- powered special with three wins to continue to edge away a championship lead. Behind them Stuart Day, Doug Turner and Chris Geyton all had a mixed bag of results in a topsy-turvy set of races where they were all battling each other at various times with each of them coming out on top of the trio at some point with some great racing.
Super Scooter Auto Specials:
This catagory is being dominated by the talented Lee Bamber who took another three dominant wins to add to his three Lambretta wins. His team mate and Tuner Warren Wilkinson chased him but even he couldn’t catch Bamber as he set some very fast laps, dropping down into just 1 min 23 secs which is very quick around the challenging Anglesey circuit.
In the overall championships Lee Bamber has built a points lead in the Auto Championship and is now only a single point behind Chris Geyton in the geared championship. This year marks the first year that there will be an overall geared and specials champion but at the moment Lee Bamber has the momentum to win both. The second half of the championship year will no doubt continue to be a fascinating battle as the class championships start to go down to the wire with just three race meets remaining. More information at www.bsso.co.uk
Production Class is all about the qualifying, because if you’re not at the front, the race can be lost whatever you do.