Weston: It's been a hard day's Knight
By TMX Archives on 21st Oct 10
KTM Factory rider, David Knight, added yet another title to his growing string of accolades by winning the 2010 RHL Weston Beach Race in commanding style.
Many riders would have been more than happy to sit back and relax having attained an WEC E3 Champions title, British Sprint Enduro title, British Enduro Champion overall and E3 class titles – but not ‘Knighter'.
He has an impressive history at Weston, the only rider to win the Quad and Solo races on the same day, plus three other solo victories but the challenge was there so Knighter took it on and triumphed against an impressive field from the world of motocross, whose challenges, surprisingly, were quite tame.
The fact that the Beach Race ran at all this year is testament to the superb fitness of Gareth Hockey who has spent a year jumping through hoops and over hurdles thrown in his path by an army of officials, all determined to get their pound of flesh.
Friday and Saturday mornings saw a veritable army of Health and Safety officials patrolling the Weston seafront, clipboards in hand, checking and re-checking that everything was in order. Add to that a large security presence, which has unfortunately become necessary at all major events and it was hard not to get the impression that the Weston Beach Race has changed forever.
This may be the case but a look at any track based four-wheeled or two-wheel competition will show that the two-wheeled off-road world has been getting away with quite a lot for a very long time as far as Health and Safety is concerned. H&S is seen by some as a pernicious cancer of modern society, but for this there is no cure.
Gareth Hockey played ball and overcame a seemingly insurmountable amount of red tape to get riders to the line and charging over the dunes where the world of officialdom was far, far away and in reality the race itself was unaffected although marshals were not supposed to assist anyone who might get stuck on the dunes.
Hockey had stated that he would limit the numbers in the Solo race to 500 and the official figure of solo starters is 475, but getting to the start line proved problematic.
The main gripe from most entrants was the length of time it took to get a transponder. The majority of riders were queuing for around two to 2.5-hours and it seems the transponder people were a little overwhelmed. But that apart, things ran relatively smoothly for an event of this magnitude.
Weston normally attracts manufacturers in great numbers but whether the recession has bitten deep or the cost of attending Weston has risen out of reach for many players, the likes of Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki did not have any significant presence. KTM was the sole manufacturer in attendance on the main parade and CCM did have a spot in the trade area but the impressive line up of factory outfits was obvious by their absence.
Crowd numbers were also down compared to Saturday last year but Sunday was at full strength with many spectators opting to attend for just the main race day rather than the whole weekend.
The course lay-out had changed significantly to previous years. The start straight was still impressive but there was no massive log-jam on the first big dune because riders were fed into a smaller motocross section of small hard-packed jumps following their blast along the straight.
This smaller section did its job well and spread the pack out before a tight left-hander on the approach to the massive dunes that epitomise Weston Beach race.
Many of the first dunes in the ‘Big Dune' section seemed to have been prepared with much harder packed sand than previous years – making them easier to negotiate. There were still a few loosely packed hills which did their job and trapped plenty of riders. This was especially true in the Quad race on Saturday but overall the challenge was somewhat easier than other years – although Weston can never be considered easy.
FOR FULL REPORT, RESULTS AND PICTURES SEE T+MX OCTOBER 22.