Podium place for Lauder pair in Germany as 2023 Sidecar World Championship begins

Lauder's Steve Kershaw and Ryan Charlwood celebrating their podium place in round one of 2023's Sidecar World Championship at the Sachsenring racing circuit in Germany on Sunday (Pic: Mark Walters)

They were among a grid of 19 crews, five of them already holding at least one world title.

It was the Borders pair’s first time at the Leipzig circuit as they begin their bid to improve on their third place overall in the series last year and they were happy to take fourth in qualifying, less than a second off front-runners Ben and Tom Birchall, the Nottinghamshire brothers returning for the full series for the first time in three years.

Saturday’s 11-lap race one saw Kershaw and two other title hopefuls ruled out by a collision within 15 seconds caused by East Yorkshire’s Sam and Tom Christie suffering a rear-end slide, however, and the Birchalls went on to win by almost ten seconds from Manx-French pair Harry Payne and Kevin Rousseau, with Anglo-French reigning champions Todd Ellis and Emmanuelle Clement third.

The Mansfield men also won the 20-lap race two on Sunday, seven seconds ahead of Kershaw and Charlwood, with the Christies third.

Kershaw was happy with Sunday’s efforts, if not the day before’s mishap, saying: “I’m so chuffed.

“Sam Christie came straight over after Saturday’s race to apologise as it was a genuine error. Unfortunately, it meant we had no race data for Sunday so we had to take an educated guess on set-up to get the tyre to last and it seemed to work.

“I’m so happy the fans got a good battle as they just love sidecars here.

“We’re motivated now for the next round at Spa in a month’s time to try and go one better.”

Round two of the championship takes place at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium on Friday and Saturday, June 16 and 17.