Thursday 3 November 2016

Team Force dominate at Aragon

Greg Fastré and Richard Hubin led from the early stages, only interrupted once, for a short time, by Mertens and Simpson, to score their second win of the 2016 series.












Sweatshop Phase One entered two teams: Mertens/Simpson on bike no 1, and Brasher/Lindén on the no 4 bike.
The no 1 bike retired whilst 2nd with 28 minutes of the four hour race remaining -having fought off challenges from the whole field and tucked in about 100 seconds behind Force at the head.















A rider error, passing under a yellow flag, resulting in a "drive through" penalty did not help the team's progress!

The no 4 bike had a steady trouble free run to fourth position.

















Qualifying was topped by the new Edge Racing Team (formerly Monex Europe) with Sweatshop no 1 in second, Force in third and Sweatshop no 4 in fourth.

The surprise of the meeting was a second team bike no 50 of Team Force, raced by none other than Mathieu Lagrive and Bruno Lebihan! Regrettable they retired with machine failure in the early stages, as did Team Edge Racing.

Neate no 17/19 were second, Taurus were third, Alf was fifth and Roadrunner sixth.

Congratulations to all on a good meeting.

















Season Summary:

During the season it was a hard slog keeping the Suzuki engines together, but it was worth it. With six wins, and a new Oschersleben race and lap record it proved there was still life in the old dogs!

Winter development will centre upon engines this time, plus beefing up the stock of rolling chassis spares to give more depth. And also of course the new bike... more on that later!

Personnel wise, it was another supreme effort by the core of this fantastic team -  some of the challenges thrown at it seemed insurmountable at the time, but all were overcome.
I will never forget nursing that leaking and cracked P&M Suzuki on to its Mettet win, nor for that matter, Ian pushing over the line at Osch for that one!

Peter Lindén, once again the backbone of the team, has performed on and off track superbly, and has been central to all six wins. It's been our pleasure to have him in the team. Congratulations to Hugh Brasher, Mike Dickinson, Ian Simpson and Stéphane Mertens, who have all raced with us this season and are now well established team members as well as friends.

And finally, a big thank you to our sponsors; the main men being Hugh Brasher, Ray and Lee Marchant, Graham Matcham and Maurice Waldock. Without you all it just would not have been possible - you have brought a lot of people a lot of pleasure.

Postscript to the ECS points controversy

The teams forced an FIM meeting at Aragon, where a carefully scripted back fitting exercise was delivered by the FIM.
In the absence of ECS rules, the FIM representative carefully selected extracts from the EWC non-permanent team rules (despite the teams concerned doing all races) to come to the bizarre conclusion that any team could adopt any number and even select which of its bikes could carry the points!
It fooled nobody, and even the ECS, after admitting their error, will consider changing the rules for next year. Apparently, Force and Roadrunner simply turned their backs and exited from the circus.
Hugh Brasher established that the teams had no route of appeal.