This year in Oschersleben will be a bit of a sidecar bonanza. In addition to the FIM Sidecar World Championship for F1 sidecars, there will be two races for F2 sidecars, a 10-lap sprint race and a 15-lap Gold race. These two races will count towards the winner collecting the FIM Sidecar F2 World Trophy. The F2 machines have a tubular chassis and a maximum 600cc engine capacity.
It will be a busy weekend for some teams; Tim Reeves and Gregory Cluze, who are currently leading the F1 Championship, will be competing for this trophy as well as trying to increase their F1 title lead. Reeves and Cluze will have no problem adapting from the more powerful F1 machine to the F2, as they stood on the podium at the Isle of Man TT races this year. Mike Roscher and Anna Burkard too are going for the Trophy. Roscher has competed in F2 racing for years now, and as he and Burkard know the circuit, they will be hoping for a good result. Michael Grabmuller will contest the Trophy races with his partner Sophia Kirchhofer as passenger. Sophia is no stranger to the world of sidecar racing, as she contested the F1 championship last year as a driver with Anna Burkard as her passenger. Grabmuller and Kirchhofer have the fastest lap time on an F2 machine around the 3.667km Oschersleben circuit, a time of 1.39,545.
There will be a team from New Zealand, too, hoping they can lift the Trophy. Barry Smith and Robert Shorter will be racing their “Car Cox Motorsport NZ” BLR chassis 600 Suzuki. Driver Smith won the “Marlboro Clubman British Championship” way back in 1985, and finished 18th in the World Championship in 1990. His passenger Shorter has been consistently in the top three of the New Zealand championship since 1997 and he has the New Zealand land speed record over a quarter mile.
Another well travelled team will be here too. Masahito Watanabe and Takashi Yasuda of Japan will be racing a 600 Honda in a LCR chassis. The team run under the name of “Rising Sun Racing”. Driver Watanabe has been in the top three of Japanese national championship since 2001 on the larger F1 machine, and won the national championship in 2006. He made his Isle of Man TT race debut in 2007.
Scottish driver Gordon Shand with his passenger Phil Hyde will be racing a “Shand” Chassis 600cc Suzuki. The pair are currently sitting sixth in the British “FSRA” F2 championship. They also competed at the TT races on the Isle of Man this year with an average speed of 107.96mph in race one. Shand is a multiple Scottish champion, and in 2010 he won the “International Sidecar Trophy” in Schleiz, Germany, with Tony Belsey in the chair.
The all German team of Eckart Rosinger and Andy Kolloch will be racing a “Baker” chassis with a 600cc Suzuki engine. The pair know this track well and will be hoping to upset the bigger teams with a good result. Driver Rosinger is well known throughout the sidecar world as he organises testing for sidecars during the closed season. He also organises the “International Sidecar Trophy”
The French team of Remy Guignard and Frederique Poux will be racing a 600cc Suzuki in an MR Equipe chassis. The team are experienced in short circuit racing and road racing. They have competed in the British “FSRA” F2 Championship and Isle of Man TT races in the past and they will be looking to finish well up the leader board at this event.