Sandiford takes the win Butts it’s Hillas’s title

The Dirtbike–Traxs crew were once again at the famous Butts Quarry motocross circuit in Derbyshire for the last round of the National Putoline Winter Hare Scramble championship. With days of heavy rain preceding the event, the going was going to be challenging for the riders.

The track, based on the old motocross course, contains short steep hills, jumps, step-offs, a technical quarry section before leading to the woodland, the riders emerge from the woodland into the man-made rock and log section, a favourite with the hordes of spectators. With a full entry the Dirtbike-Traxs team had to turn away scores of riders from this popular venue.

The  race day started  at 9 am with the junior and senior b riders , Dirtbike-Traxs  always find time to put on youth races as they are the potential stars of the future, and once again the Senior B race was fought out to the end with Davey Todd taking the win from Ayrton Aldridge in 2nd with Reece Morewood third - all completed 7 laps of a shortened circuit. The Juniors did exceptionally well to come to terms with the slippery conditions, their small wheels finding traction hard to come by, but once again Luke Flack mastered the conditions and lapped the field to take the win from 2nd placed Tom Mowbray and Joe Smith in 3rd. Congratulations to all the young riders who took part in the race, especially those who finished a real character-building exercise.

At 10.30 the main race of the day started bang on time with the Experts leading the field away. By the end of the second lap Martin Sandiford on board the Team Sandiford Honda crf250x had taken up the lead from the rapid Darren Carter, these two were pulling away from the rest of the field. Harry Hillas in third was also starting to put some distance between himself and the chasing experts. Harry only required a top ten finish to claim the national Putoline winter hare scramble championship title. Luke Lusher was making great progress on the Husqvarna wr 250 until an unscheduled drowning forced his retirement. After a three month lay-off Team Sandiford rider “the Biffstar” was on the pace early on until he succumbed to severe arm pump. As the finish flag came out at the 2.5 hour mark Martin Sandiford had pulled out a winning margin of 3 minutes and 26 seconds over Darren Carter. 3rd place went to Harry Hillas, this performance ensured he claimed the winter series title - what a long way he has come in the sport in the last year.

In the Clubman E1 class young Gary Daniels put in another blistering ride to win from Joe Deakin (Husqvarna WR 125) - these two are set for bigger things in ‘08. The Clubman Open class was won by Stephen Hind from Simon Douglas with regular rider Mick Hammond picking up his first DBT trophy in third. The Sportsman open was won by Bill Aukland from Thomas Bell.

In the battle of the up-and-coming youngsters, the Senior A class, Josh Bendell took the win from Thomas Healy with Jane Daniels in third - Jane was also the best girl rider of the day.

As the riders  finished it was clear that another day of outstanding hare scrambling had been achieved by the progressive Dirtbike-Traxs team, before the last riders had reached their vans the results were ready thanks to the transponder system, accurate and real credit to chief timekeeper Martyn Field. With this system there is no need to stop riders to try to identify their numbers as the system automatically records every rider that passes through lap scoring which rules out human error, especially in these mud fest conditions.

Next stop for the hard working Dirtbike-Traxs team is Ellington Banks, Ripon on the 27th of January with a Husqvarna hare scramble. Happy New Year.