With bright sunny conditions the sidecar teams took to the track for the ten lap sprint race, in Grobnik, Croatia, for the third round of the FIM SiderCar World Championship first race.
Although not fully fit, Tim Reeves and his passenger Gregory Cluze took command of the race from the lights going out. They were never threatened for the race lead throughout the ten laps. Their “Team E-Aide Motorsport” LCR, Kawasaki, never missed a beat, and they were to have the fastest lap of the race too, a time of 1:34.776. A delighted Reeves and Cluze said after the race, “We have done the first one, now we have to do the same tomorrow, it will be a hard race, but we will do our best for the same as today”
With Reeves and Cluze on their way, it was Bennie Streuer and Geert Koerts on their “Streuer Racing” LCR, Suzuki, who led the chasing pack, right on their tail was Pekka Paivarinta and Kirsi Kainulainen on their “44-Racing” LCR, BMW. The two teams were to have a great battle all through the race, with the pair at one point of the race, side by side with full opposite lock and sliding round the long left hand corner at the top end of the circuit, putting on a great show for the spectators. This battle between the two teams was to go on all through the race, but it was Paivarinta and Kainulainen who got the better of Streuer and Koerts, they took the chequered flag for second place with Streuer and Koerts Third.
John Holden and Ashley Hawes on their “John Holden Racing” LCR, Suzuki, had a terrible start from third spot on the grid. Holden explained, “I made a school boy error! I took my place on the grid but I went onto the dirty part of the track to take my place, when the lights went out the bike just sat spinning on the line, my mistake”. However it was not long before the pair were battling hard and made it up to fourth spot, it was all to no avail though, on lap five the pair were going into the first corner when it looked like the machine had lost all gears. However this was not the problem, Holden explained “I thought the engine had blown, the noise was unbelievable underneath me, I slowed to get off track, when we came to a halt it turned out that the exhaust silencer had come off, we could not continue. So it is another DNF for the team, let’s hope tomorrow we can do better”.
With Holden and Hawes gone, this let Uwe Gurck and Manfred Wechselberger give chase to the leading pack on their “Polizei Sport Verein Wels/ Gurck Racing” LCR, BMW, by the end of the race they were not far behind the third place team. They crossed the line in fourth place, with Wechselberger saying “It was a good race for us, maybe some more laps and we could have fought for a podium, but fourth is okay”.
Crossing the line in fifth spot was Jakob Rutz and Thomas Hofer on their “Sidecar- Racing Team Rutz” LCR, Yamaha. Rutz and Hofer did not get the best of starts to the race, but they were to fight hard and make up the places to give them the fifth place. Rutz said after the race “We just could not get grip at the beginning, but at the end we did okay”.
Sixth place went to Janez Remse and Stuart Ramsey on their “Remse Racing” LCR, Yamaha. They were locked in a battle with Rutz and eventual seventh place finishers Milan Spendal and Freddy Lelubez on their “Spendal/Remse Racing” LCR, Yamaha. Remse and Ramsey managed to break away Spendal and Lelubez and give chase to Rutz and Hofer, but in the end it was too much to ask. However Remse and Ramsey are happy with the result and hope that they can go better in the big race tomorrow.
The New Zealand pairing of Colin Buckley and Robbie Shorter on their “Carl Cox Motorsport” Windle, Suzuki had a great start to the race they came out the first complex of corners in fifth spot, but as the race continued they were to slip back down the field. Driver Colin said “What a start, it was great, but as the race went on the bike just was not handling well, it felt like the front end wanted to go light and go all over the place, we will see what we can do for tomorrow’s race, but we finished, that is the main thing”.
Crossing the line in ninth place was Philippe Gallerne and Julien Chesneau on their “Team Gallerne” RCN, Suzuki. They had a steady race and they hope they can do better in the race tomorrow.
There will be an 18 lap gold race starting at 12.45 local time (Sunday)