Supermoto Championship 

Cadwell Park

6th November 2021

The end of the summer has been and gone, and the leaves are dropping together with the temperature, so it’s not exactly great motorcycling weather. Our last chance to watch and photograph a bit of two wheel action before all the race bikes get locked away until next year was last weekend at Cadwell Park.

This was the last round of the Nora Sports Supermoto Championship. We have covered this round a few times over the years and the weather has always been a bit dismal. In fact, last year the rain came down with such a vengeance I wasn’t sure that they would be able to continue racing.

This year it stayed dry but cold, and I was fine as I had my big coat on. A few of the riders had gone with hoodies over leathers and I don’t blame them. The wind chill factor must have made it freezing.

However, the adrenaline rush from launching over the mountain must have negated the effects of the cold, as all the riders were on it, with some great racing and a few crashes over the weekend. We only went on the Saturday as Silverstone was calling on Sunday.

As with all events that I don’t follow on a regular basis I look out for interesting riders or machines. The obvious stand out riders were Davie Todd, Storm Stacey and Scarlet Robinson.

Not regular riders in the championship, but as the domestic championships they have been racing in are over, it was time for them to get out and enjoy themselves.

Scarlet Robinson has been competing this year in the HEL Performance British Junior Supersport Championship. She now races with the FHO Racing Team as part of the BSB support races.

FHO Team Owner Faye Ho is mentoring and supporting Scarlet as she champions female representation within two wheel motorsport. Scarlet was running in the group B Class and managed three firsts in class over the weekend, a great finish to the season.

Storm Stacey was taking part in British Superbikes this year ending up mid table in his first year. Having watched him race, there is a lot more to come from this young man.

He definitely has the skills, not so much when doing a last lap wheelie, ops! Just off the podium in the first two races in fourth and ending up 21st in the last race he wasn’t the only one to have a disappointing final race on Saturday.

Davie Todd rides in the British Superstock 1000 Championship. I last saw him at the Donington Park round where he came second in some really bad conditions. He also had a disappointing last race on Saturday. Winning the first two races I’m not to sure what happened in race three, maybe a little more fuel might have been a good idea. 

It was a great race none the less, coming from the back of the grid to take the lead it looked to be another win in the bag, only for him to coast to a stop on the final lap.

We know Davie likes this type of racing. He was dominant at this round last year and has taken part in the Elf Moto Superbiker at the Jules Tacheny Circuit in Belgium this year.

The superbiker event brings together the best Supermoto riders with a total of over 350 riders from all over the world. With a good selection of British riders mainly from the IoM TT crowd, it’s an event I would like to go and see. Hopefully CV-19 will be a distant memory this time next year and we can get back to visiting foreign fields.

It wasn’t just two wheels entertaining the crowd over the weekend. The bonkers fast superlights were out on track. These pure race machines are powered by motorcycle engines with two classes, 600cc and the open class running 900cc Honda Fireblade engines.

Watching them jump the mountain was worth the entrance fee on its own. You could see them pushing harder as the race went on eventually getting all four wheels off the ground!

It was round at the tricky Hall Bends that the speed and grip round corners that these cars have really came into sharp focus. They were all on the edge of adhesion, some more than others! Great fun to watch, I will be back next year.

Photographic Post Script

Trying something different is always something I like to do when I'm track side and I'm not one to stand by convention, I like to experiment. The motorsport world of photography is dominated by long expensive lenses attached to expensive cameras. One of the lenses you wouldn’t expect to see trackside, but was a permanent fixture in the press photographer's kit bag back in the day, is the Nikon 180mm f2.8 prime which if you can find one now is a bit of a bargain, about £350 second hand.

This lens has fallen from favour as the 70 - 200mm f2.8 telephoto now dominates this sector of the market, with the 180mm being relegated to the studio as a portrait lens. This lens is quite basic by todays standards, no vibration reduction or different modes buttons, just one switch that selects manual or auto focus.

I decided to give this lens a run out at Cadwell. My intention was to use it round the paddock, but standing at the bottom of the mountain I thought, what the hell, and started taking a few pictures. Attached to a crop body D7200 it worked very well. The bikes filled the frame and it focussed very quickly. As you can see, the image quality is excellent as you would expect with a prime f2.8. 

Nikon have been making this lens for ever in one form or another, so you would expect there to be loads second hand. Well there are a few, but not that many. You can still buy them new but the original ones built in Japan are the ones to go for.  I think photographers keep hold of them as they are built like tanks and seem to last for ever.

I'm going to take this one out more and leave the much larger and heavier 70-200mm at home. The 180mm only is about 750g and is a small lens with a built in lens hood. I don’t think it will be much use at Donington or Silverstone, but for pit walks with its great bokeh, it should be ideal. Roll on next year!

Thanks to RPW Photography for helping out on this report which you are welcome to share with your friends on Social Media.