Todd Ellis secures first FIM World Sidecar championship victory

Todd Ellis secured his first World championship race victory on home tarmac at Donington Park in round three of the FIM World Sidecar championship on Saturday - and rounded off his weekend with a dramatic third place in the second encounter on Sunday.

North Kelsey's Ellis was on top form in qualifying and put the Santander Salt LCR Yamaha on pole ahead of Reeves/Rousseau and series leaders Schlosser/Fries.

When the lights went out to herald the start of the first race on Saturday it was Reeves who got the hole shot with Ellis following in close formation and Schlosser just a second behind.

On lap five Reeves tangled with another machine and ran across the grass at Craner Curves to rejoin at Starkeys in sixth place.

This left Ellis three seconds clear in the lead from Schlosser and although Reeves did manage to get up to fourth place he was some five seconds adrift from Ellis who was homing in on his first win.

He crossed the finish line some three seconds ahead of Schlosser to pick up maximum points and move closer to the championship leader in the rider standings.

Last weekend in Hungary Ellis and his French passenger Emmanuelle Clement were originally placed third in the second race but after a post race inspection Tim Reeves was disqualified for a technical infringement which elevated Ellis/Clement to second place in the race and gave him a healthy advantage over Paivarinta/DeHaas for second place in the overall rider standings.

When the sidecars were about to form the grid on Sunday for the second race at Donington it was spitting with rain.

There was a few minutes delay and then two warm up laps which subsequently reduced the race to 17 laps.

With Schlosser out with an engine failure there was a chance for Ellis to take the series lead if he could win this second race so there was everything to race for.

As the lights went out it was Reeves who once again got the hole shot and this time Ellis had to settle for fourth place.

But he powered past Blackstock/Rosney by the end of the first lap to chase after Kershaw/Charlwood who he overhauled on lap four.

Setting their sights on Reeves a couple of seconds ahead Ellis/Clement made chase putting in the fastest lap of the race with a 1m 37.191s in their efforts to get on terms with them.

But they couldn't shake off the attention of Kershaw/Charlwood and the three outfits fought it out over the remainder of the laps with less than half a second covering the three of them.

Everything came to a head on the final corner of the last lap when the two leading outfits made contact.

This allowed Kershaw/Charlwood to sail past and take the win.

Reeves/Rousseau and Ellis/Clement raced side by side to the finish line with Reeves taking second by the smallest of margins, 0.087s, from Ellis.

The points from these two races put Ellis/Clement just two points away from the series leader with the next round at Assen in Holland on July 23.

Keep up to date with sport at Lincolnshire World on social media on Facebook and Twitter