Thanks again to all who came and supported, to ride or observe.
Marking out was finished on Christmas eve in conditions that were just about perfect. No rain forecast, just milder weather and strong winds. The gound was very slick but perfectly rideable and sections were set to offer a challenge in the sense that you have to at least do a bit of thinking about getting lines right in slippery conditions, rather than simple ride in ride out follow the leader sections. Sometimes the weather does it's best to wreck that approach especially when the forecasters get it hopelessly wrong again. It hammered down on Christmas night... A fair amount of adjustment was needed on the moning of the trial but in the time available it wasn't possible to account for every route on every section and the expert route suffered in particular in places, so apologies for that, the challenge wasn't intended to be quite that much....
The weather did the most damage on the hard route with sections 1, 6 and 8 being the worst affected. They were still possible and there were clean rides recorded on all of them, but there was no room for error, you either got it or you didn't. This also had a knock-on affect on some of the 50/50 route as well but their scores weren't too excessive thankfully.
The expert route was won by Sam Yeomans who lost more marks in a Stafford Auto trial than he has probably lost in them over the last few years in total... Phil Hulme put in a good ride on the 50/50 route to take the win on his tidy Yam mono.
The medium and easy routes rode pretty much as intended with just section 8 causing more than it's fair share of problems.The medium route win went to Keith Burgess who was run close by Aspen Hopkins who put in a good ride on his twinshock Fantic to finish just two marks behind. Bill Brown took the win on the easier route by two marks from Bruce Bolton, a multiple winner on this route in previous trials.
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