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This meeting was the penultimate weekend of The Earlystocks club championship rounds and with it was unfortunately a disappointing entry of only 16 championship riders. The majority of the class championships have already now been decided however there is still the 750cc class which has still to be decided, this is between Mick Baillie and Pete Boyles. The EMRA championship is also still wide open in a number of classes as EMRA make it double points for the last round of the season so there is a possible 60 points still up for grabs this weekend. As regards Anglesey it looked as if we were going to get the usual weather i.e. wet as Friday wasn't too good at all, surprisingly it turned out be dry on the Saturday morning and things were looking up. There was a bit of a problem when we realised that all the additional entries had been omitted from the programme. Fortunately the Clerk of the course was very helpful and we managed to get all the additional entries out together on the back of the 400 race in a sort of none championship race. This was race two on the programme and was a warm up for the first Earlystocks race proper that was sixth on the programme. When it got underway it was the GSX1100s of Rob Eley and Steve Cave that soon drew clear and things were going well until mid race when it started to spit with rain. It didn't seem bad enough to even wet the track but it soon became noticeable that all of a sudden there were fewer and fewer riders out there. In fact a third of the grid went missing in one lap there could only be one reason Captain Oily Bob of the Exxon Valdez had run her aground. For the few to whom this means nothing Rob Eley on the GSX1100 had worn through the engine casings and left a fine spray of oil around a fair part of the circuit despite pulling off as soon as he was aware of the problem. It must have been the combination of a fine spray of oil and the slight rain that compounded the effects of each other as the rain stopped before the race finished and the next event went out without any problems and with no attention to the track required. With Rob out of action the lead was inherited and kept by Steve Cave and he was followed home by Mick Baillie who was just ahead of Pete Boyles, they being the first 750s home. Close behind them came Shane Stocks on the production class RD400 and he was in turn followed home by Trevor Wagland. The next Earlystocks machine to finish was Nigel Griffiths who was out for the first time since breaking his collar bone at Mallory in July, apparently he had a bit of a moment at Radar, a corner that's broken a few collar bones itself over the years, on the first lap but got away with it. Pete Mabberley followed him home on his gsx 1100 the MZ of Graeme Acott was next and he was in turn followed home by Darren Wood on his GS1000 and Karl Scott on the GSX400 neither of which were sounding nor running at all well. In addition to Rob who pulled off the other casualties were as follows Rob Patterson and Richard Insall came off between the hairpin and Douglas Out while Terry Davies and a 500 BSA classic bike having a run out with us came off at School. All at first looked to be alright but as Richard started to straighten out his RD which had suffered the least damage of any of the machines his ankle decided to swell up and it was the end of the weekend for him. Everyone else got back out although Terry had to use his spare bike and Rob Patterson had to dash back home for spares, good job it's his local circuit. Pete Jarnell also failed to finish as his GS650 just ran onto two cylinders when it got warm and as it turned out nothing would cure it. This was by far the most eventful race of the weekend but for all the wrong reasons. Nobody fell off for the rest of the weekend despite their best attempts to. Karl Scott managed to sort the problems with the GSX400 it being a coil breaking down, the same problem that Pete Jarnell was suffering from but there weren't enough spare coils to go round. Mention must be made of Rob Eley's performance in the first race on Sunday when he was definitely out to prove something. To those watching at the entrance to School it looked as if it was going to be first one into the sea but he kept it altogether lap after lap and ended up 13 seconds clear with a lap record of 50.6 sec. Steve Bailey. |