Sidecar Superprix by Santander Salt

From Mark Walters

Weekending the 17th and 18th of October we will see the second of two “Sidecar Superprix” challenge weekends. The first one in Oschersleben, Germany was the “Sidecar Superprix by Bonovo Action”. This one will be the “Sidecar Superprix by Santander Salt”. This will be at the 2.433 GP circuit of Brands Hatch. These two weekends of sidecar racing have been all down to the hard work and effort by promoters Jurgen Roeder and Roger Body.

From Mark Walters

Weekending the 17th and 18th of October we will see the second of two “Sidecar Superprix” challenge weekends. The first one in Oschersleben, Germany was the “Sidecar Superprix by Bonovo Action”. This one will be the “Sidecar Superprix by Santander Salt”. This will be at the 2.433 GP circuit of Brands Hatch. These two weekends of sidecar racing have been all down to the hard work and effort by promoters Jurgen Roeder and Roger Body.

In Oschersleben the weekend belonged to the Swiss pairing of Markus Schlosser and Marcel Fries, the pair had a faultless two races and went home with a maximum 50 points. Unfortunately, Schlosser and Fries will not be at Brands Hatch. Driver Schlosser has torn ligaments in his knee and has to have this operated on. The team is disappointed not to attend this event.

Also, it has been a very hard year for all types of sport, due to the situation with the COVID pandemic. Because of this a lot of the international teams who would have been coming to Brands Hatch will not be present. This is down to travel restrictions and quarantine rules set out by their countries governments.

With Schlosser and Fries not going to be at Brands the battle will be hot for top honors. The second place team with 36 points is Bennie Streuer and his partner Ilse De Haas, the Dutch pairing will be hoping for a good weekend at Brands Hatch, Streuer a former World Champion has stood on the top spot of the podium at Brands in the past. The team was very fast and smooth in Oschersleben, they will hope for the same this weekend coming.

However, Streuer and De Haas will have to fend off the local, eight times world champion Tim Reeves and his French passenger Kevin Rousseau. Reeves and Rousseau have 33 points, third place in the challenge. Reeves knows this track like the back of his hand, he comes from Tenterden, Kent, just down the road. Rousseau from Le-Mans France, they will be hoping for a trouble free weekend.

Todd Ellis and Charlie Richardson, current British sidecar Champions had a great weekend in Germany, even with a, in sidecar terms “a roofing” are coming to Brands Hatch in fourth place with 29 points. Ellis and Richardson will certainly be going for glory; they took third place in the second race at Oschersleben.

Fifth place in the challenge coming to Brands Hatch is the Finish driver Pekka Paivarinta with his French passenger Emmanuelle Clement they have 21 points. Paivarinta himself a five times world champion has had mixed results here at Brands in the past. Again though, the team will certainly be going all out for glory.

Sixth place in the challenge goes to John Holden and Jake Lowther, they have 19 points. Holden and Lowther had a good solid weekend’s racing in Germany, although driver Holden was a little despondent with the results, I think this could have been down to the fact that the team had lonely races, out on their own, but none the less a good solid weekend for the team.

The next two teams will not be at Brands, Ted and Vincent Peugeot, seventh with 17 points and Josef Sattler and Luca Schmidt, eighth 14 points.

Next up is Kevin Cable and Kyle Masters, they have 13 points in ninth place. Cable and Masters came to Oschersleben with no previous visits to the track. The team worked hard all weekend and their lap times dropped considerably throughout the weekend. They will be hoping that their local knowledge of Brands Hatch will bring them up the point’s board.

The only team left in the “Superprix” challenge that will be present at Brands will be Rupert Archer and Ben Chandler. They had a nightmare weekend, first they had an oil pipe split in qualifying leaving the team to work hard changing an engine, this was only a precautionary decision just in case there was going to be any damage to their engine due to the oil pipe leak. Then disaster in the second “Superprix” race, the team had problems with the safety lanyard causing their machine to cut out bringing them into pit lane for a DNF.

All the other teams contesting the “Sidecar Superprix” challenge with points are international teams and will not be present at Brands Hatch due to the travel constrictions mentioned earlier.

The “Sidecar Superprix by Santander Salt” will be running in conjunction with the “Molson Group British Sidecar Championship” There will be two races a 12 lap race on Saturday and a 14 lap race on Sunday. All the teams will be hoping for fair weather and a good weekends racing.