Time for Lawrance brothers to break open the bubbly

It was smiles all round from the new national sidecar champions, Auckland brothers Chris and Richard Lawrance, at Pukekohe on Sunday.

It had been a long time between drinks for the Yamaha pair, who last won the national title 15 years ago, in 1993 to be precise, but the two brothers-in-arms, rider Chris and swinger Richard, were searching for a bottle-opener on Sunday afternoon.

"We finished fifth last year after missing one of the five rounds when I fell off a ladder and broke a bone," said Chris. "But we wrapped it up with a race to spare this year and that feels awesome.

"The secret to our success this year was the reliability of our Peter Anderson-built bike. It's powered by a 2005-model Yamaha R1 and never missed a beat all season," said the 44-year-old.

"We beat defending champions Steve Bron and Dennis Simonsen at round one at Timaru and then their clutch blew up at round two at Ruapuna. After that it was all ours.

"Some might say it is time for us to retire from racing while we are on top - I'm 44 and Richard is 43 - but we love this sport so much. We'll be back next year.

"In the meantime, we hope to get ourselves back over to race at the Isle of Man in 2010. We'll just have to see how all that works out."