Speedway Champions

BACKGROUND
     Not too long after speedway racing started, reportedly at the West Maitland Show Society in 1923, sidecar racing on a dirt track oval quickly followed, leading to the first national Sidecar Championship being held in 1931 at Melbourne's 'Exhibition Speedway' in Australia.
     Whilst solo speedway expanded through the conduit of the Empire and into Europe, building on team and league racing, it has been in Australia that this category of motorcycle sport has been most dominant, with extensive developments of both motors and chassis, particularly from the 'seventies onward. After the inaugural Melbourne title meeting the intermediate years saw a variety of 'other' Sidecar championships staged, with contradictions and inaccuracies commonplace. So it is to post-war years that we turn for serious and reliable data on official 3-wheel championship winners, where, under the skies of the Southern Cross, composite speedway meetings with 2-, 3- and 4-wheeled classes, rather than the dedicated solo events of the Northern hemisphere, continue to be the norm.
     With intensive speedway activity in both hemispheres in the late '40s, a number of antipodean charioteers appeared on UK tracks, (see Lt: Aussie champ Jim Davies at Belle Vue, Manchester in 1950,) until 'black-listed' by the British SRA, because  "sidecars would damage the circuits at present used exclusively by solo riders," this despite the fact that the same  solo riders, British and Australian, including the SRA chairman-cum-England captain, were racing together in composite meetings Down Under.

    In 1989 in the UK full-scale Sidecar Test matches between England and Australia were instigated by ex-pat Paul Pinfold, which in turn, in the early 1990s led to the 'World Of Rebels' troupe being formed. The group comprised sidecar crews from England, Australia, New Zealand, USA and South Africa, mounting international test match 'friendlies' and individual events at a limited number of English league team tracks plus forays into mainland Europe. But with the cost of travel and track wear again being fingered as problem areas, plus solo riders objecting to loosing heats and earnings to the 3-wheelers, the initiative fizzled out.
    Brandon Stadium, Coventry was one venue that gave sidecars regular outings, initially involving mostly Grasstrack machines on the Bees' vacant 'away' race nights, and the first (unofficial) British Championship were run there in the late '90s. In 2001, the Supercup series was staged, with an opening Qualifer at King's Lynn, and this ran for a few years, (see page SSC.2,) bringing with it sidecar stars from Australia, New Zealand, and USA. During this time, the British Sidecar Speedway Championships were made official.

     Present day sidecar speedway racing involves 1000cc combinations powered by methanol-fuelled 'Japanese 4s', i.e. straight 4-cylinder engines, most commonly Kawasaki but also including Honda, Suzuki and a few specials. Also known as 'Australian Sidecar Speedway' because of the origin and predominance of the sport Down Under, it is staged principally in English-speaking Commonwealth countries where public roads are driven on the left, plus USA. Race direction is clockwise because of the chair position, left of the motor. For more on sidecar equipment see the final section, 'Machinery', at the foot of this page.
     The equivalent motorcycle sport in mainland Europe is designated 'Long Track' sidecar racing, (or Sidecar Track Racing, - the term 'speedway' isn't used,) and features lightweight combinations with the chair on the right of the bike's  500cc GM or Jawa lay-down motor. The meetings are run on sand or grass surfaces of up to 1000 metres, in anti-clockwise direction, as for solos. It is noted that the FIM Gold Trophy/World Championships introduced in 2005 at U.K. and Australian venues are “Track Racing Sidecar” title events, as also with the British Championship of the present decade and some YGT solo title classes, as it attempts, apparently, to desegregate the 'slider' classes of Long- , Sand- , Grass-   and Speedway-racing, as circuit length also becomes less of a categorization.
     Note also that in the UK grass track sister-sport, a typical meeting today can involve either LH or RH Sidecar events, (indicating racing direction: both have the passenger chair on the left.) Here initial British sidecar classes were limited to 1300cc but this limit was cut to 1000cc after competitors started fitting Ford and Hillman car engines. The '500cc Sidecar' class grass championship, featuring lightweight combo's with lay-down speedway engines, was introduced in 1978.

FIM  WORLD,  OCEANIA,  AUSTRALASIAN,
         BRITISH  &  EUROPEAN SIDECAR CHAMPIONSHIPS

    Click thumbnail for full-size tables.
   

       British Championship  2017  &  2018


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   The British Sand Racing Championships have also featured a 1000cc Sidecar class in the present decade with the chairs' Sand title being taken exclusively by two families, the Wilsons and the Winterburns.  Wilsons Snr. and Jnr, who both took podium places in the first British Sidecar Speedway Championship at Coventry in 1996, were Sand Champions in 2012 and '14 respectively. Father and son Rod (in 2013, '16 and '17,) and Gareth Winterburn (in 2015) taking the other 4 Sand titles, young Billie Winterburn's chairing seemingly being the decisive factor.
   2023 Update:  Relocated to the Fylde cost in Lancashire post the Covid hiatus as the ACU Sand Master Championships, and with Billie Winterburn now driving, in 2022 he became the third family member to claim the ACU sidecar championship. In the second year on the North-West coast, in front of a 5000 crowd, veteran Colin Blackbourn with Carl Pugh pushed Owen and Farwell into second place. 
 (See above, plus Long Track page for all sand results, solos and combos.)




                            British Sand Race Championship, Vazon Bay, Guernsey, 2012

                                       Below, Champions 2012, Rob Wilson & Terry Saunders

Australian NATIONAL  +  STATE  Sidecar Champions
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    Click thumbnail for full-size tables.
 

New Zealand Sidecar Champions
    Sidecar speedway is just one of the dozen or more classes in the multi-category programmes staged on New Zealand dirt oval speedway tracks, alongside, Stocks, Midgets, TQs, Saloons, etc. as well as solo speedway. But unlike Australia and its controlling body MA, 'Speedway New Zealand',  (SNZ) is the dominant regulating authority for bikes and trikes, with MNZ in charge of other motorcycle (and 4-wheel speedway,) the two having polarised after NZ.ACU became independent in 1983.
     The name Les Dwight dominated the NZ Championship in the '70s, when father and son Les Snr. and Les Jnr., with passengers Graham Pullan and Steve Unwin, took 5 consecutive titles. Pullan stopped the run by taking the title in his own right in '76/'77, pushing Les Jnr. into 2nd place. Brian Turner next claimed the title and made it 4-in-a-row, a feat repeated by Robert Vandenberg  at the end of the 1980s. At the same time Vandenburg also won 4 NZ Sidecar Speedway Grand Prix between '86 and '91, plus becoming North Island Champion in 1989 and '90, so dominating completely the NZ sidecar scene. In the new millenium Nick Edmonds & Paul James claimed a hat-trick by winning the National, the Grand Prix and the newly introduced Long Track national sidecar championship in 2005, part of their national speedway and national Long Track triples that decade. 
    New Zealander Andrew Buchanan is prominent on today's wider sidecar scene, racing extensively in Australia where he has taken podium places in 2017 and 2018 in both the FIM Oceania Championship and the FIM World Cup, after having been South Island champion in 2016 and NZ Grand Prix winner in 2011.
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                     Les Dwight Snr.                                                  Andrew Buchanan & Phillipa Burns