|
|
Pearce Cycles 2008 Series: Round One
Bringewood, Ludlow
Jim - 2nd March 2008
Back to racing archive
Another year, another Pearce Cycles event and another brilliant weekend of racing. Bringewood is a solid date in the downhillers diary, a track thats notoriously difficult in the wet but grippy and fun in the dry.
Fortunately last weekend it was the latter, the ground was dry and the track running pretty sweet. The forestry have been doing a lot of work on the hill recently, and large swathes of it have been cut down, we have lost a few of the old tracks due to this but also a few new ones are cropping up and on the books is a whole new track down the hill.
The top section used the bombhole track, with a slightly revised mid section.. thanks to the loggers for felling across the track, but this made for a good little section, plenty of roots, almost resembling Hopton in many ways. It was then down through the left hand track, with the big chute berms, across the final fireroad into the left hand side trail and down into the arena over the big tabletop. Short and sweet, there's only so much we can say about a track that has been used for many years now. Saying that, I haven't heard any complaints yet.
As its the first race of the year, out comes everyones new bikes, new race kit and another season of racing gossip and banter. Who is on it this year? People shift around categories and new sponsors are looking for a good result.
As usual the Morgan brothers were looking fast, and Scott Beaumont was out on the new Rocky Mountain but Dirt mag fast boy Ralph Jones took the win this weekend with a scorching 2.21, and Solid/Electric's Rob Smith 2.9 seconds behind.
One part of the weekend that stood out for me, and definitely deserves a mention.. the women's category was packed! Well if you consider some rounds only attract 2 or 3 riders, there were 14 on the hill! Can only be a good thing, and with Emily Horridge putting down a 2.49 they're not exactly far behind.. pedal lads!
The weekend overall went well, the uplift was good, in fact in future i'm not even going to bother commenting on Pearce Cycles uplifts, Dave and Lindsay just get it right every time and thats all you need to know. This is a pretty short race report, so i'll pop some extra photos in it for you. Race results are available here and the information for the next race at Hopton available from the Pearce Cycles website. Race photos are available right here for the princely sum of £2!
See you at Hopton Castle, 19-20th April!
|
|
|
|
