2006 Manx Grand Prix Report

The 2006 'Manx' saw the entry of just two Greeves, the lowest number for the last few years. Ian Rycroft was in the Junior Classic with his Griffon based racer and Mervyn Stratford in the Lightweight classic with his Silverstone. George Ridgeon's machines did not get an entry, but he turned up with the bikes anyway just in case someone needed a machine.

Practice week went reasonably well despite the changeable weather conditions which affected several of the sessions. The first of these being the Saturday night session, after the newcomers had done their speed controlled lap the rest of the session was abandoned due to the weather closing in.

So the Monday evening session gave most their first outing, with the Classics out in the first part of the session. However all future practices would see them out in the second half of the session due to some of the modern riders complaining they had caught the back end of the classics, (surely this could have been resolved with the organisers allowing a better time gap?). The Tuesday evening session saw the classics get the rough end of the deal as they were red flagged at Ramsey, and had to proceed back to the grandstand under travelling marshal escort due to the mist coming down over the mountain.

Wednesday and Thursday went ok, despite a delay in getting the session underway, however Friday night was cancelled due to rain, just leaving the remaining Saturday night.

Inevitably the disruption of the practices left quite a few non-qualifiers, most of which struggling to obtain their laps or speeds. Happily however both of the Greeves runners qualified easily. Unfortunately George's bikes did not get an airing due to lack of practice time, as Chris Howitt had agreed to take one out due to problems with his own machine.

Both Ian and Merv were in the combined Junior/Lightweight Classic race on Wednesday 30th August. The race was held in the best conditions we had seen for on track action throughout the Manx so far, although the weather promised to close in, for the evening. The race got away on its scheduled start time of 10:15, with Ian Starting at No 58 in the Junior class and Mervyn No 92 in the Lightweight.

At the halfway stage both were running well, and came in for their scheduled fuel stops, both of with appeared to go well, with Ian in the top 35 of the Junior and Merv 9th in the lightweight. At the end of the four laps Ian came home in 28th position in 1hr 47m 09.06 (84.51 Mph) and Merv 7th in the lightweight at 1hr 45m 53.37 (85.52 Mph) and also taking a Silver replica.

The Junior was won by Roy Richardson (Honda), from Tony Cawte (Honda) and the evergreen John Goodall (Seeley 7R). The Lightweight was won by Geoff McMullan from Peter Wakefield and Peter Richardson all Suzuki Mounted.

RS

Photos below by www.iomguide.com