Jumps, bumps and water splashes

A good weekend at Ainsdale, Adrian Lavelle reports.

The first round of the English national buggy race series was held this weekend at Ainsdale in the NW of England. Now for some reason for the last few years we have managed to arrange for some cold off shore winds at Ainsdale and due to the large sand dunes this makes for evil racing. Well this year the organisation team managed to book some sunny onshore winds and what a difference this made.

On Saturday we awoke to rain and we all expected it to be a typical Ainsdale race; this was re-enforced when we found some of the other racers cars stuck on the entrance to the beach as the rain had caused the car park area which is on the beach to turn to quick sand. Well with some help from the beach rangers 4×4 we managed to get everyone on the beach.

While we all got our equipment ready the clouds cleared and the sun broke through and with the 16MPH onshore wind the day looked like it could be a success. Now Ainsdale is a wide beach and at low tide there are between 4 & 5 sand banks each surrounded with water gullies of various depths, which makes for interesting buggying without the sun - its cold in February.

The first race started and I was in first place as I approached the top mark but I needed to cross the first sand bank to get to it. As I did this I found myself stuck in soft sand like porridge and as the rest of the fleet arrived and got stuck around me I struggled to get out. I managed to-do this but I was now in 12^th position and Ryan McGavin seeing my issue had taken an alternative route and gained a big lead and was running 1^st. Luckily for me the first race of the weekend is a 40 minute mini enduro so my chance had not completely gone so I pushed hard through the fleet. The back straight had 3 water gullies and between the last mark and the finish line there was a drop off which at points was about 2 to 3 foot high and as you suicide gybed this corner at speed it was quite hair raising at times. On my 4th lap I had got to 2^nd place and was hunting down Ryan and on the next lap I took him as he made a mistake in the soft sand himself.

The 2^nd race started and as we all knew the track there wasn’t going to be the same issues at the first mark as if you over shot the mark you could cross the bank without too much issue. As I did this and tacked back for the 1^st mark I saw Matt Job and 1 other pilot had already passed the first mark and had a 50m lead on me. He had obviously found a much better route to the mark and unless I found it I was going to struggle to win, but as I had got back into 1^st place by the 2^ndlap I had to find it on my own. So I decided to cross to the 1^st bank early and managed to find a shallow crossing but others found themselves floating in a foot of water. This made all the difference and I finished 1^st , Matt 2^nd and Ryan 3^rd.

By the end of the first day Peter Lynn riders were standing in the top 3 places and all our fingers were crossed for a good 2^nd day as rain was again forecast. So we all went to the pub that night to have a drink to the weather gods and we must have offered plenty of beer offerings as the sun broke out on the Sunday just as we started the first race and the wind was hitting 20 to 26mph.

The 2^nd day’s course was similar to the 1^st day but we had some interesting high speed drop off’s into water and a monster one that we hit at 40mph+ which I nearly came out on in the first race. Ryan took the first race as I had far too much power on the 3.8m Vapor so on the 2^nd race I dropped to the 3.2m. Unfortunately as the flag dropped for the start I tangled with a visiting Scottish pilot and was dead last to get across the start gate. This was probably my favourite race as I worked the kite as hard as I could for the 3 laps and got back into 3^rd just behind Ryan. The last race of the day was interesting with some close wheel to wheel racing with Ryan and Graham Steel, but eventually I gained a healthy lead over Ryan.

Big thanks go out to the PKA organisation team for putting on a fantastic race weekend and for setting some memorable courses and to the weather gods, please can we pre–order some more of this weather for the next round.