2018 BSMA All British Championship - Maisemore report
By Ady Cowshall on 10th Aug 18
The iconic All British event held at Maisemore by the Severn Valley team went up another level this year. Alfie Smith was in there with machinery turning the place upside down with it finishing off looking like something from the AMA tour!
There was a lot of pre-race speculation as to the outcome in the adult MX1 and 2 Premier class with riders like Ashley Greedy, Shane Carless, Josh Waterman, the entire JSR Honda team and Luke Dean all in the frame.
Greedy was out with injury, Waterman decided he needed to save himself for the AMCA championship, Luke Dean was returning from injury and it seemed like Carless was topping the list until a last-minute announcement that Maxxis top 10 runner Dan Thornhill was entered.
BSMA - All British Liam Litchfield
For those that have not been to the new Maisemore, the start is on what must be one of the steepest uphill starts in the country, straight into a double apex left-hander and it was indeed the Cab Screens Honda mounted Thornhill that hit the front from the first turn and ran away with the first moto.
Jaydon Murphy got off to a flyer as usual but was knocked down a few places by the fierce competition as Jenson Day and Carless battled there way through to have a race long dual.Luke Dean made an amazing charge through the field to displace Josh Taylor on the final lap for fourth and first mx2 to cross the line.
Moto 2 was a similar outcome, Dean came through from another horrendous start to fourth taking mx2 again, Thronhill was 30 seconds clear of a hard fought battle for second between Taylor, Day and Carless with it ending up in the reverse order.
Harry Linton and Joe Cadwallader came through the pack battling each other with Linton holding off his fellow mx2 rider to both get inside the top 10 for 5th and 6th in mx2. Ridgway chased Jack Timms home as that pair took second and third.
Corrie Southwood was the star of the third moto as he stormed through to the mx2 win and third in the race behind Thornhill and Carless. Southwood claimed two class wins making up for a bad first moto with Timms taking runner-up overall behind Dean. Thornhill was the undisputed winner of MX1 going 5 out of 5.
The Novice/Vet group was a tussle of brotherly love at the front with Simon and James Lane going 1-2 all the way apart from the fourth moto with Tim Truman sticking a borrowed bike into second place splitting the brotherly love and taking third overall.
Giles Davis was up there with the top runners but didn't quite have the consistency to make the top 3 despite showing great speed. Jamie Smith showed everyone his rear mudguard blasting up the start hill for a holeshot or two but couldn't make it past the line to hold the lead for a lap but still finished with a good result and a smile on his face.
BSMA All British Shane Carless
The Novice level had stepped up this year as Dirt Bike Rider columnist Dan Grove took his KTM to the front in all but the first moto and got into the mix with the vet riders. His closest competition coming from Jack French and Mike Rudge but neither really got to challenge apart from the first moto where Rudge took the win from Ryan Gower.
The Senior class was an epic battle of two- vs four-stroke. The 125 class was a complete domination by Aaron Colley taking all the glory and indeed on Saturday showing the four-strokes what a two-stroke exhaust smells like.
Following him home in second was Ben Watkins, although had Zach Coopers clutch not given up in the final moto it could of been a different story, with Cooper out it left the door open to Keelan Southwood to take the third podium step.
The 250fs but for a slip up in the second moto where all going Josh Greedys way with his stiffest competition coming from Colley on the 125 on Saturday. After taking runner-up in the first moto, chasing hard in the second, the third moto Greedy was not to be outdone.
Colley was all over him but Greedy used all the tricks in the book to keep him behind as Colley pulled level on a number of occasions but the Greedy race craft has been passed down. The second moto with Greedy down gave Tommi Davies and Marshall Smith an opportunity to put it to Colley.
With only five seconds splitting the top three over the line, Colley took the glory from Smith and Davies, Greedy coming back to fourth. The Big wheel class provided some great racing. Alfie Jones looked like he had it all in the bag until Sunday morning when a first lap disaster left him right at the back of the pack.
But a ferocious fight back through the field after stopping to help another downed rider really put the cat among the pigeons and closed the gap right up to the last race. It had been a clean sweep of the first three motos for Jones with a 10 point advantage over Billy Duke and only 16 points splitting the top four places.
Callum Baldwin took moto four from Duke with Jones clawing his way back through to 10th. Ethan Sills had pushed Duke down to third in the second moto keeping things really tight at the top so it was all down to the final race of the day for overall honours.
Jones went out and smashed it and Sills took second after some early mishaps from Duke who needed that runner-up spot to tie on points for the win leaving just four points in it for the top three places.
The Small wheel action was bar to bar but it was Ben Mustoe who put his green machine out front in all but one of the motos.He was hard pushed at times by the likes of Jake Randall who took that final win as consolation and Lewis Roden and George Hopkins all getting a mix of second and third placings.
Randall was the most consistent to take runner-up with Roden and Hopkins only being split by two points. The Juniors was an epic battle between two good friends now separated by the Atlantic ocean as Freddie Bartlett came back over from Sweden for this one-off ride in the UK.
It was a battle royale as Bartlett hit the front but Freddie Gardiner reeled him in, made the pass then binned it, leaving Bartlett to build a large enough lead to take the win. Not too far behind the Freddie show Ollie Bubb brought it home for third after a great battle with Kenzie Cole.
Bartlett again stole the show in the moto two as Gardiner threw it away on the second lap leaving a lot of work to come back to second in the dying stages. Bubb managed another third as he got passed by Gardiner and passed Cole in the same lap.
By the third moto Bartletts confidence had grown and Gardiner just couldn't find a way past as he dogged him all race long and going into Sunday it was an early crash leaving Bartlett out front on his Cobra to take an easy win despite Gardiners faster lap times hed left to much to do.
All the ex-pat had to do was ride round to take the overall in the final moto but he went out in style to take a max 5 from 5 and the biggest trophy back to Sweden. The Auto class might not have been quite as big as the others but the racing was still up there for entertainment with the best of them.
Olly Waters was the cream of the crop but a mistake in the first moto Sunday could have changed the final outcome. A terrible start left him all the way down the field and leaving a huge amount of work to get back into the decent points finally ending up sixth.
But it was Logan Keene who took the win, just when Matthew Morgan could have done with a top result lying second overall at that point. The podium places got divided up amongst the top six riders showing up in the final three being the most consistent.
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