Bob Smith Spring Cup - Oliver’s Mount

22 April 2023

Oliver’s Mount road racing has had some troubled times in recent years. The world wide pandemic didn’t help but the health and safety inspectors could have very nearly hammered the last nail into the coffin. If it wasn’t for the resilience and determination of the team of volunteers that run the events on the park that overlooks Scarborough, we could have very nearly lost the only road race in England but thankfully we didn’t.

With no racing during the pandemic and investing £100,000 into the venue, the team were looking forward to recouping some of the cash as the fans came back to watch the racing.

It was not to be as the site still had a few problems, with a number of buildings having to be demolished. Talk about kicking you when you are down.

Fast forward to 2023 and this last weekend when we visited for the season opener, the Bob Smith Spring Cup, things were looking a lot better after a lot of work.

A full two day race card of motorcycles and sidecars enticed the fans back to the Mount and whatever god looks down on this part of the Yorkshire coast, he had smiled on the fans, bestowing the best weather of the year so far.

Well it was nice on our Sunday visit, although parking up my motorcycle in a decidedly soggy field hinted that wasn’t the case for the start of the meeting.

Chatting to a few of the fans trackside there were tails of camper vans getting stuck before they had even got to their pitches. This is not uncommon and the heavy equipment required to tow out the van was at hand. How the top of a hill becomes so waterlogged is beyond me. 

One improvement I would like to see is some strips of hard standing for the bikes. It is a motorcycle meeting after all and even with my puck under my side stand my bike was at an alarming angle when I got back to it at the end of the day. 

So, on to the racing. The day flowed well with a constant stream of racing machines contesting different classes. The largest capacity modern motorcycle allowed to race is 600cc, with just about every capacity up to that cc racing in different classes. 

The classic superbikes are the only bikes over 600cc allowed to race on the mount now. And what a mix of classic bikes we had! Suzuki Harris-F1, Kawasaki ZXR 750, Ducati 996 and a gorgeous sounding Manx Norton ridden by James Hind to name but a few. 

The feature race around the twisty undulating 2.43 mile track was the Bob Smith Spring Cup. Twenty two riders competed for the cup, with Joey Thompson coming out on top by just 0.374s from Rob Hodson.

Thompson, starting from row two, had a great start and led on the first lap only for Hodson to take the lead on lap two. Thompson got the lead back heading the pack for the final hard fought for three laps of the eight lap race.

Dominic Herbertson, who had started on pole, crossed the line in third. #9 Jim Hind was in the mix at the start of the race but retired on lap three.

In the Classic Superbikes it was #77 Tom Weeden on the Suzuki SRAD 750 who took the honours on Sunday. #19 David Bell who was not on his usual Yamaha OWO1, but on a Yamaha YZF 750, leading at the start for two laps before Weedon came through.

#80 Barry Fubar made a last lap move to push Bell down to third on the final sixth lap. These three riders dominated the three Classic races over the weekend with Weeden taking two wins and Bell being triumphant on the Saturday race. 

It wasn’t just two wheel racing at the Mount ,as the sidecars were also out. In the three races over the weekend  #1 Lee Crawford was first #99 Steve Ramsden second and #4 Dave Molyneux third in each race.

So, to sum up the Spring Cup and road racing in general at Oliver's Mount it's business as usual for the spectators. The Oliver's Mount team have done a great job getting the racing back on and there looks to be a decent calendar. You can find out more by visiting the Mount's website.

Photographic Post Script

For the spectator photographer heading for Oliver's Mount you will be please to hear that you don’t need lots of fancy kit to capture a great image at there. A crop sensor camera with a lens in the 70-200mm or there about will do the job, add in a teleconverter and you will be able to capture most of the images you see here.

You are so close to the action on most of the track (as it should be with road racing) that having a long lens can be a disadvantage.

My shooting buddy and I both used the Nikon D500 DSLR with the latest Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 for the majority of these shots. At Jeffries (the jump pictures) I swapped over to the Nikon 200-400mm f4 with a 1.4 teleconverter while RPW Photography used the Nikon 200 - 500mm.  

Thanks to RPW Photography for helping out with this report which you can share with your friends on Social Media using these links.