After celebrating a strong win in the opening race of the FIM World Sidecar championship in Germany on Saturday Ben and Tom Birchall were involved in an accident involving a back marker in the second race on Sunday. After being taken to hospital for further investigation into their injuries Ben and Tom were pronounced fit enough to return home to Mansfield on Monday.

In the sprint race on Saturday the Mitchells of Mansfield supported brothers took pole and settled into fourth position, making their way through to battle with Pekka Paivarinta for the race lead. The pair pulled away from the rest of the field and exchanged places frequently throughout the remainder of the 11 laps. But Ben and Tom finally got ahead and pulled away to take a three second win over their Finnish rival to claim 25 championship points.

Race two began well for the Mansfield brothers and they took the lead on lap four. They extended their lead to over three seconds and were looking good to complete a winning double. But they came across a back marker ahead who suddenly braked and stopped leaving Ben nowhere to go and he was unable to avoid the collision.

After being assessed at the circuit Ben and Tom were taken to hospital for further treatment and investigation into the extent of their injuries; Tom was ok but Ben had a collapsed lung and a suspected broken vertebrae and was kept in overnight. By morning the lung had inflated and the vertebrae found to be intact and although carrying some heavy bruising Ben was discharged from hospital and able to begin the journey home to Mansfield.

The boys are now in Switzerland with Louis Christian to work on the LCR F1 outfit which suffered extensive damage. Ben explained: “The crash was not of our doing. This backmarker decided for some reason to stop right in our path and on the racing line.

"The crash has caused us a lot of grief and expense and it makes me question why such an inexperienced rider was permitted to compete in the world championship. We will remain here over the weekend to make some repairs and replace damaged parts to the outfit in order to be up and running again in time for the next round of the series in Croatia at the end of June.”

But before that Ben and Tom will travel to the Isle of Man with the F2 outfit to take part in the two sidecar races at the TT festival in early June.

“Luckily we are uninjured and able to race the smaller outfit at the TT races. It would have been a huge disappointment to us and also our sponsors and supporters if we were not able to do this, especially after having to miss the TT last year. We are looking forward to the TT and hoping we can do well this year," he added.

"We will however miss a couple of rounds of the British F1 championship, we should have been at Brands Hatch this weekend and then on to Knockhill straight after the TT. Brands is definitely out of the question and to get the outfit up and running for the world championship in Croatia we will reluctantly have to give Knockhill a miss as well.”

Practice for the TT takes place from Monday, May 30 to Friday, June 3 with the first three-lap sidecars race scheduled for Saturday, June 4 at 3pm. The second race takes place on Wednesday, June 8 at 12.45pm.