Chimay was a meeting of firsts for the IHRO Continental Circus.

The first time for many years that a motorcycle had raced on the long circuit and the first practice session was for the IHRO 250/350cc class. Luke Notton on his Seeley AJS 7R had the privilege of being the first person to complete a lap as he was first round in practice. To Luke also went the honour of the first race win on the long circuit when he won the first 350cc IHRO race on Sunday morning.

The other firsts were in the 500cc class where Phill Sharp rode a 3 cylinder 500cc ‘Privat’ MV during practice and in the first race on Sunday, and then switched to a 500cc Gilera 4 cylinder machine for Monday’s race, although IHRO has had it’s fair share of exotica racing with us over the years, these two machines were a first for us, and ideally suited to the circuit which is so similar to the Grand Prix tracks of old. Many people commented on this feature, that their bikes seemed ‘at home’ on the 9.45km track with its wonderful fast sweeping bends, such a contrast to the modern short circuits.

The IHRO races were combined with classes for the Lansdowne Cup, enjoying its first overseas race as a guest of IHRO, between the two organisations, we put the best turned out grids of the weekend on the circuit, with the 250/350cc IHRO class running with the 500cc Lansdowne machines and then the 350cc Lansdowne starting with the 500cc IHRO bikes, there were 55 entries for each race, as IHRO still maintains the tradition of push starts, and Lansdowne have gone over to clutch starts, the IHRO classes in each race started first, followed, 30 seconds later by the Lansdowne machines. These races had by far the most spectacular quality of machines and entries, a fact recognised for the Monday races when they were the only two tabletextts which had their laps increased to 5 from the original 4.

Practice for both classes had confirmed that Lea Gourlay was the man to beat as usual but with Phill Sharp pushing him on the fabulous sounding MV in the 500 class and Bart Crauwels close behind Phill and with Chris Swallow lurking in a close 4th position, the races looked like they might be entertaining. In the 350 cc class, it was father Bill Swallow doing the chasing with Luke Notton in 3rd place.

The IHRO 250/350cc race was the first race on Sunday morning, Luke Notton was in a determined mood and quickly disappeared leaving a slow starting Gourlay to try to catch up, at the finish it was Notton 15 seconds ahead of Gourlay with Ives Glauser 4 seconds behind in third place. Peter Branton, enjoying his first ride on Bob Rowe’s ultra quick Manx was 6 seconds behind in 4th. Battle of the race was again between Rob Den Tieter on his Seeley 7R and Joss Sassen on his Ducati, these two have been dicing all season and in this tabletextt Den Tieter got the result by 11/1000 of a second, passing Sassen on the line. Mick Nash de Villiers was again the winner of the 250cc class, expressing his delight that the Bultaco completed the distance.

The 500cc race was Gourlay’s rtabletextge, he won by a comfortable margin of nearly 10 seconds from Ives Glauser with Chris Swallow third. 4th was Steve Linsdell who had come to terms with the unfamiliar circuit and was going well. Marc Michot on his Norton, caught and passed Peter Branton on his Seeley G50 to take 5th place. Tom Gaynor and Mick Moreton disputed 12th place with Gaynor getting the result by 0.4 seconds, there were battles all the way down the field and the huge crowd was well entertained.

Mondays 5 lap races were equally as good, this time the front positions of the 350 class were reversed with Gourlay winning from Notton by just over a second with Peter Branton moving up a position to third but some 25 seconds behind Gourlay. Marc Michot was in another battle, this time with James Walker on Dennis Gaskins Aermacchi, less than half a second separated them at the line, Konstantin Moraglis on his Ducati beat Dave Hughes on Tony Dunnell’s Norton by a mere 12/1000 of a second to take 9th place after a race long battle. Yet again Mick Nash de Villiers won the 250 class.

The finale of the IHRO races was the 5 lap 500cc race which started just before lunch on Monday, again Gourlay dominated the race and Ives Glauser and Chris Swallow retained their previous race positions with Linsdell again 4th and fifth place going to Bart Crauwels who started from the pit lane after having ridden the Paton in the previous 750cc race. The battle of the race this time was between Jose van Meurs and Martin Orgee, Jose just got the result by 15/100 of a second.

The long circuit received almost universal approval, with many riders hoping that it will be used again next year, one long time Manx Grand Prix aficionado tabletext went as far as to say that it could tabletext replace the Manx for him, what more can you say?

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