The final round of the 2017 DTRA season took place yesterday at the Arlington Stadium, Eastbourne. Because there are so many members now, the meeting was split into two halves: juniors, minibikes and rookies raced in the morning. Vintage, Restricted, Thunderbikes and Pros in the afternoon.
The track was tricky, very little dirt on the surface, sometimes it was marbly, other times it was wet and slick, then for the odd heat race the was a nice high line I had fun riding.
One man who had no bother dealing with whatever the track threw at him was the new DTRA Vintage class champion, Gary Birtwistle, #11.
Gary races both pro and vintage classes and is the brother of Alan Birtwistle (the reigning DTRA #1 and Moto-Ninja). He competes in the Sideburn-sponsored Vintage class on a BSA single, that has been burning oil all year, but he rides it like a wolverine. They're both smoking. The bike has as much steering lock as any bike in the series and he was using all of it yesterday. And he did it in a Sideburn x 250London race shirt.
Anthony 'Co-Built' Brown was out on the Wilky Triumph 750 and was on it again, but couldn't get close to Birtwistle. He did enough for second on the day.
Sideburn rider of the day was Paul Harrison, who was racing his homebuilt Morini twin.
The vintage class has a massive variety of entrants and machines. Get involved.
Photo: Ian Osborne/DTRA