American-style TT speedway comes to Kings Lynn

King’s Lynn’s Speedway oval has never seen racing like that served up on Saturday night as American-style TT dirt track motorcycling thrilled the crowd. 

The TT format – the latest Stateside import from the fast-growing Short Track UK franchise – sees a jump added into the mix with 12 bikes a race in no-holds barred shale action.

One feature of the event – debuting here in the UK – is that none of the 30 strong field actually knew how big the promised in-field jump was going to be. 

It turned out to be five feet with no cushion of a landing ramp; and the sight of bikes, often several abreast attacking the obstacle in was sensational.

Short Track’s appeal is it brings together a range of motorcycling racing experts with backgrounds in Speedway, Ice Racing, Enduro, Road Racing, Supermoto and MotoX: and it was perhaps unsurprising that practitioners of this last mentioned discipline, tended to excel at Saddlebow.

Going into the Grand Final, Stamford’s Victor Bull looked favourite to take the win, closely followed in the ratings by Lincolnshire’s Tim Greig. 

But the two battling Brits had reckoned without the pluck and sheer determination of overall Silkolene STUK series leader, Marco Belli; and somehow the flying Italian summoned up all his strength and gained every bit of horsepower out of his Ariete Kawasaki to storm to another round victory.

Outside of this top three, pride of place and Helmets4u Rider of the Night prize went to Richard Atkins: incredibly more than keeping pace with the big bikes to reach the Grand Final on his 125 Yamaha – by some distance the smallest machine on view.

At the opposite end of the cubic capacity scale, the monster machines in the Harley-Davidson backed Thunderbikes provided the biggest thrills and bone-shuddering impacts off that jump with one-time King’s Lynn and Boston Speedway star, Peter Boast holding out Marco Belli to move into a dominant position in that overall title race.

The teenagers competing for the CCM Junior Cup took the jumps in their youthful strides with Burton-on-Trent’s Tom Wooley making it four wins out of four.

Meanwhile it was a less comfortable outing for the four-wheelers, with the Welbourns of Wisbech Short Track Quads going to a battered Alan Hooker screaming his Banshee to victory from the Honda-mounted Mark Wright.

Results:
Silkolene Short Track UK Round Four:
1st Marco Belli Ariete Kawasaki 
2nd Victor Bull  Yamaha
3rd Tim Greig  ASR Honda
4th Glyn Pocklington , Helmets4u Honda
5th Peter Boast , Team Suzuki
6th Steve Hall  Red Bull KTM

Harley-Davidson Thunderbikes Round Four:
1st Pete Boast  Team Suzuki
2nd Marco Belli  Harley-Davidson
3rd Richard May  CCM

CCM Junior Championship Round Four:
1st Tom Wooley
2nd Ben Barker
3rd Alf Hyde

Welbourns Quad Championship Round Three:
1st Alan Hooker 350 Banshee Yamaha
2nd Mark Wright Honda
3rd Charlie Welbourn 500 Polaris