With temperatures dropping as low as six degrees, rain falling and strong winds, Scarborough’s Spring Cup on Sunday wasn’t for the feint hearted but Guy Martin and his Tyco BMW did enough to take the overall victory in the Spring Cup although it was the 600cc Suzuki of Daley Mathison that won Sunday’s second leg.
With the poor conditions reducing races to six laps and increasing the lap times by almost 12 seconds, the results on Sunday were somewhat different to those on Saturday and with both Lee Johnston and Ryan Farquhar opting out of the feature race due to the inclement weather, the race was certainly a lot more wide open.
Ivan Lintin took full advantage of the gap vacated by Johnston on the front row to grab the holeshot on the RC Express Racing Kawasaki but it was the two 600s of Mathison and Tom Weeden that led the field round at the end of the first lap as Lintin and Martin dropped back to third and fourth some six seconds in arrears. Dean Harrison had a nightmare first lap though, running on at one of the hairpins, and was back in the pack in 13th.
Mathison and Weeden continued to pull away with the 200bhp of the 1000cc machines almost tiptoeing their way round as Lintin maintained station in third but with Martin doing likewise in fourth, albeit 15 seconds further back, he was able to take the Spring Cup trophy for the third consecutive year. He came home just ahead of impressive newcomer Dan Hegarty and Scot Bruce Birnie as Harrison fought back to take seventh.
Mathison was clearly at home in the wet conditions and duly dominated the early stages of the 600cc race, leading at one point by almost seven seconds. He eased the pace considerably in the second half of the race and although Lintin got a little bit too close for comfort and closed to within three seconds, he pulled away again to take his second win of the day. Harrison was a third lap retirement and it was Hegarty who claimed a fine third from James Neesom, James Cowton and Mark Goodings.
With a number of riders deciding to pull out of the meeting for the remainder of the day, including Martin, Farquhar and Johnston, just seven riders lined up for the final race of the weekend, the Senior, and it was Harrison who took the win on his 600cc Yamaha from Mathison although there was only two tenths of a second between them at the chequered flag. Lintin took third.
Lintin had earlier taken the Super Lightweight race and with Dave Molyneux/Ben Binns opting out of the action, Conrad Harrison/Lee Patterson took two comfortable F2 Sidecar wins. Meanwhile, there were further wins on the day for Farquhar (Classic F1), Michael Sweeney (Spring Cup B), Darren Cooper (Junior B) and Nick Anderson (Lightweight).
