Race Report - 21st October 2007 - Weston

Reid Finishes A Fantastic 11th At 25th Anniversary Weston Beach Race

Gareth Hockey and the team from RHL Activities promoted the 25th Anniversary edition of the Weston Beach Race on the weekend of the 20th and 21st of October, the seaside resort of Weston-super-Mare playing host to over 50,000 spectators and 2,000 competitors over the two days of competition. Justin Reid and the F&F Racing GYTR Yamaha team made the trip over from Comber to take part in the increasingly popular Quad and Sidecar event, the massive entry of almost four hundred quads and fifty sidecars doing battle for three hours around the challenging circuit on Saturday the 20th of October. A purpose built mixture of huge sand dunes, tight infield sections and a one mile straight where speeds approaching seventy miles per hour can be achieved, the 3.5 – mile Somerset circuit provides an extreme test of endurance for both rider and machine.

Justin in action at Weston

As the gates opened for the start of the event, the four hundred and fifty competitors blasted their way up the long start straight, eventually rounding the sweeping corner at the top end of the beach and approaching the first of many dunes. Having made a fantastic start, Justin was running in the top ten and progressing through the field on the opening lap while easily working his way over the many huge dunes, but almost half way around the lap Justin took a tumble off his machine after having fallen foul of a deep drainage trench that ran right across the track on a fast stretch of the circuit which also caught out William Waggott, Ricky Tordoff and Kevin Morris almost at once! Waggott and Tordoff were both unfortunately injured after coming off their machines but Justin was relatively unhurt and was able to get up, dust himself off and remount his quad, only to find that the plastic clip that attaches to the kill switch had pulled away from the cord. With no way of starting his machine and no hope of finding the tiny clip in the sand, it looked like the race was over for Justin after just five minutes, but in an amazing show of sportsmanship, Ricky Tordoff kindly donated his kill switch to Justin as he would be taking no further part in the days racing! Having lost valuable time, Justin was now stuck in traffic, as dunes quickly became blocked and harder to negotiate, but undeterred Justin was gradually working his way up the field as they approached the one hour mark when all his hard work was again negated, Justin’s machine refusing to start after he had switched it off at one of the many blocked dunes to prevent it over-heating. A bump start got him going again, but the resulting flat battery while trying to initially restart the engine forced Justin to make an unscheduled stop to inform his pit crew to get one to replace it. Now running outside the top 50, Justin set out again at a blistering pace, amazingly moving up to 27th as he made his scheduled stop on lap 10. With the bike refuelled, clean goggles and the radiator washed out, Justin pushed hard and continued to set consistently fast lap times for the remaining ninety minutes, and despite riding in pain for the majority of the race and having to make a further unscheduled stop to wash out the radiator again, Justin crossed the line after completing three hours of the gruelling circuit for a fantastic 11th overall, the highest placed Irish rider and the 3rd highest placed Yamaha rider across the line.

Once again this has been a fantastic result for Justin and the F&F Racing GYTR Yamaha team, Justin’s achievement made even more amazing by the fact that he was riding a standard Yamaha YFZ450 and the valuable time that was lost during the race which was beyond his control.

Reid

“I suppose I really should be happy with the result, all things considered but I can’t help but think that things would’ve been a lot more enjoyable if it wasn’t for the crash on the first lap. It was pretty ridiculous that the trench was left right across the track but I must say well done to the marshals who jumped into action straight away to draw attention to the hazard. Obviously Ricky and Willy are much worse off than me, both having broken bones, so I wish them both a speedy recovery. I felt bad asking Ricky to borrow his kill switch tether but it would’ve been a ludicrous way to end the event.

Once I got going again, I was able to settle into a decent pace and start making my way through the field, though it’s a total lottery here - you can lose a lot of time very easily when a dune is blocked… When my quad wouldn’t start at one of the dunes I had to get one of the Marshall’s vehicles to tow me to bump start the engine. I pitted that lap to tell my team to go and get a battery as I thought that I would need to change it to finish the race, however when I went back out to do the remaining time before my scheduled pit stop, I found that the track had become a lot more ride-able and I was able to get some good laps in with out any danger of stalling. When I did pit I decided not to waste time changing the battery but just refuelled and changed my goggles, gloves and helmet as my peak had been damaged during the off earlier. (Also the battery problem seemed to have rectified itself by the end of the race).

At approximately the two-hour mark, my ribs were starting to get really sore from the crash and my pace suffered badly for a while but I was able to ride through it and make up a significant number of places on the last couple of laps. It’s just a pity that I wasn’t able to push as hard as I would’ve liked for the whole race but there’s always next year!

My main priority is to get home now and get checked out in order to be fit to Captain Team Ireland in the Quad Inter Nations Event next week”

Results

Winner – Paul Winrow; 2nd – Jeremie Warnia; 3rd – Carl Bunce; 4th – Liam Cater; 5th – David Baldwin…11th – Justin Reid

Next Race : Sunday 28th October – QRA Inter Nations Quad MX, Welsh Commin Newton, Hereford

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