Mark Cringle and Jack Sim made it a day of champions at the final round of the Triumph Triple Challenge in front of a large British Superbike Crowd at Silverstone yesterday.
The pair finally took the honours for the Michelin Young Guns Trophy and the TDG Cup respectively, after what has been an extremely hard fought season in the competitive one-make series.
Manxman Cringle ended the weekend with a non-finish in the second of the two races on the BSB support card. However, with his nearest rival, series runner-up Josh Wainwright, doing the same in the first race, Mark was crowned Michelin Young Guns champion and takes one of the most prestigious prizes in British motorcycle racing, a test with the Triumph World Superstock team.
As the title was fought out by Cringle and Wainwright, the battle for third in the series came right down to the wire as Scott Rowbottom and Tim Venables lined up on the grid for the final time tied on points. By the time the race was over it was Venables who would claim the final podium result with a Michelin Young Guns class victory, as Rowbottom failed to score.
For the TDG Cup honours, Sim kept a cool head all weekend and kept up his near faultless podium finishing record, claiming two point-scoring results to end the year just ahead of his season-long rival, Mark Cheetham. Mark stuck to his half of the script for the final round, taking two TDG Cup class victories, the second overall, to keep up the pressure on Jack. But a second and a third was more than enough to claim the title.
Brazilian Rhalf Lo Turco consolidated his already secure third place in the championship with two fourth places in the two races.
In the two races on the day, it was series newcomer John Simpson who took victory in the opening event. He narrowly beat Cheetham across the line for overall honours and took the first of the two Michelin Young Guns wins for the weekend.
In race two, Cheetham had to work incredibly hard for his outright win, this time beating another new rider to the series, Danny Imberg by just eight-hundredths of a second. Tim Venables followed the pair across the line a ‘distant’ half-a-second behind just in front of Simpson as the race was red-flagged with three laps left to run.
Triumph Triple Challenge – Silverstone Race One Results:
1 John Simpson 10 laps 15m 57.396s
2 Mark Cheetham 15m 58.317s
3 Tom Fisher 15m 58.639s
4 Mark Cringle 15m 59.041s
5 Jack Sim 15m 59.953s
6 Danny Imberg 16m 00.547s
Triumph Triple Challenge – Silverstone Race Two Results:
1 Mark Cheetham 7 laps 11m 19.145s
2 Danny Imberg 11m 19.231s
3 Tim Venables 11m 19.644s
4 John Simpson 11m 19.984s
5 Josh Wainwright 11m 20.304s
6 Jack Sim 11m 24.003s
