The Short Track UK series - Europe’s fastest growing motor-cycle sport - takes centre stage at the BMF Tail End Show at Peterborough’s East of England Showground on both Saturday and Sunday afternoons this coming weekend (15/9 & 16/9).
The racing on the Peterborough Speedway track in the main arena is most certainly no exhibition but a fearsomely competed for trio of top oval track racing events. Short Track is derived from the popular USA sport of Flattrack and is sponsored by Silkolene – producers of the world’s largest range of specialist sporting motorcycle lubricants.
Riders can use any motocross, supermoto or dirttrack machine adapted so that the front brake is removed. Two-strokes can be 125cc to 500cc; four Stokes 250cc to unlimited.
In the initial qualifiers, riders have three heats of six laps duration with 12 riders in each race; with points on offer from 15 for first down to one point for 12th. place.
Those who qualify from these heats for the semis need to finish in the top five there to make the Grand Final or they try again for two available spots in the Final via the Last Chance race.
The meeting’s top 12 riders then go for broke over 12 laps this time in the Grand Final looking for all-important Championship points.
Currently leading the championship and looking to clinch his second UK crown is Marco Belli from Varese in Italy. The Harley-mounted Belli (the 2005 champ) has a pair of battling Brits breathing down his neck. Yorkshireman Steven Hall is in second; and fresh from a best of British top ten placing in the Short Track European Championship held last month in Siddeburen, Holland. Then comes the 2005 runner-up and series organiser Pete Boast – a veteran of disciplines as varied as the Isle of Man TTs, American Ice Rink racing and Speedway.
From Continental Europe come a number of stars of Flattrack including Dutchman, Seitze Hilleger – a winner at the inaugural STUK event at the main BMF Show last year.
But even that talented quintet take second billing this coming weekend to a very special guest from the home of Flattrack across the Atlantic. Making a UK track debut is Brandon Robinson. Robinson from Oxford, Pennsylvania was winner of the 250cc AMA Dirttrack championship in 2006; and this year clinched the Black Cat Pro-Sport Mile National Championship at the legendary Du Quoin State Fairgrounds, Illinois; and was second overall in the AMA Hot Shoe Pro-Sport Flat Track Championship. The Action Motorsports/ Moose Racing starlet who rides a Honda CRF 450 is the hottest of properties in the USA and incredibly he’s still just 17 years of age! The STUK championship at this weekend’s BMF Tail End is a unique opportunity for UK motorcycle sports fans to see one of the real rising stars worldwide!
And continuing the theme of youth, on Sunday attention is staged Round Six of this year’s inaugural CCM Junior Cup. This ACU-approved national youth championship is for racers aged between 12 years and 15 years; all mounted on the especially-designed for the series CCM 230cc flattracker.
Also on Sunday it’s time for the big boys to take centre stage – with the staging of the penultimate round of this season’s Harley-Davidson Thunderbikes championship. Riding to a similar flattrack format as the STUK championship, this time racers slide 600cc to 1200cc twin and multi-cylinder machines around the tight confines of the 336 metres dirt track.
Finally, courtesy of STUK, the biggest and best competition prize of the BMF 2007 calendar is up for grabs: a Harley-Davidson Sportster XL883! To have a chance of nabbing this awesome machine, show-goers need simply to go along to the STUK merchandise tent, pay just a pound; and answer a couple of simple questions. All correct entries will go into the Grand Draw to be held at the final round of the Championship at Mildenhall Speedway in Suffolk the following Saturday (22nd September)
