Last night's action at the Wave 105 Smallbrook Stadium saw the staging of the second round of the British Sidecar Speedway Championships and resulted in success for the Australian duo of Dave Bottrell and Ben Pitt to go with their victory in the first round at Plymouth.

16 crews, mounted on these monster 1000cc machines contested the 20 qualifying heats with the top four scorers going through to the final. The Bottrell / Pitt partnership won four of their five qualifying heats but so too did the British pairing of Matt Tyrell and Shaun Yates including an outstanding win over the Australians in heat 11.

Both finished on qualifying total of 14 points thus booking their respective places in the final where they were joined by two other British crews, Rich Moore / Rob Winspear and Ivor Matthews / Rick McCauley.

From the tapes it was Tyrelll who led and it looked as if they might go onto take the honours but the Aussie duo pushed them hard and eventually threaded their way past them to make it two championship wins out of two.

And they'll be looking to complete a hat-trick when the series moves onto the Abbey Stadium a Swindon tomorrow (Thursday) night. Result of last night's final:

1. Dave Bottrell / Ben Pitt
2. Matt Tyrell / Shaun Yates
3. Rich Moore / Rob Winspear
4. Ivor Matthews / Rick McCauley

AWAY FIXTURE ALTERATION...

A change of date now sees the Wightlink Islanders travel to Newcastle for their Premier League match on Monday 22nd September instead of Sunday 7th September as was originally scheduled. Please mark your records accordingly. Hopefully we will shortly be in a position to confirm a new date for our away Premier League match at Stoke which was recently rained off.

NEXT WEEK...

The Wightlink Islanders return to action at the Wave 105 Smallbrook Stadium on Tuesday of next week with a home Premier League clash with the Stoke Potters and then they hit the road with an away league match at King's Lynn 24 hours later. A full preview of both meetings will follow in due course.