Motor Racing Returns to Scarborough's Oliver's Mount Circuit

Motor racing returns to Scarborough's unique Oliver's Mount circuit this weekend, with the first event of the year getting underway on Saturday.

The opening event is the "2025 SorryMate.com May Motorcycle Hill Climb". The return to racing follows earlier access issues with Jackson's Lane, which prevented the usual Spring Cup event from taking place in April.

While Oliver's Mount is known for its main race events, this weekend offers a different experience. 

Andy Hayes from the circuit says this weekend's event provides a good introduction to the sport.

"It's a shame we couldn't put the Spring Cup on in April as usual.

But as a lot of people know, we've had access issues with Jackson's Lane. That's on the way to being resolved with the council. In the meantime it's really good just to get the season underway this weekend with the hill climb.

The thing about the Hill Climb it's a very low key event, it's not the usual glitz and glamour of our main race events. It doesn't have the beer tent, it doesn't have the live music, it doesn't have the chat show and that kind of thing. But what it is, it's just a really cheap, good value way of people coming to experience an event at all of us Mount for the first time.

Hopefully they'll come to the the main event."

This weekend's event will feature two different course variants. On Saturday, competitors will tackle the "Twisty Climb" which is 1,217 metres long. This course starts on Jeffries Jumps, goes through the Farm Bends, and finishes along the Start/Finish straight up Sheene’s rise. 

Sunday features the traditional Hill Climb route, which is 1,076 metres, climbing from the paddock to the summit at the top of Oliver’s Mount. Sunday will also be a National Hill Climb Association Championship day.

Spectators can expect to see "a quite an eclectic mix of bikes, side cars, and also the the really impressive superite buggies which have thousand cc engines in them". Other machinery taking part includes Race Bikes, Vintage Bikes, Morgan 3-Wheelers, and the popular SuperMoto class, which has taken overall wins in recent years. There is even a "Run What Yer Brung" class for road legal bikes. Mr. Hayes noted that the superlite buggies are "usually the quickest thing up the hill".

Entry for the event is designed to be affordable. Tickets on the gate are £6 per day for adults, or £10 for the weekend. Children under 16 are admitted free. Highlighting that "a family of four could come for come for the day and it probably cost them about 10 or 12 pound for for the whole family," Andy Hayes questions what else could be done for that price and issued a call for local people to support the venue.

"We need the support of, of the locals and, and from further afield as well. It, it really is a case of use it or lose it. , it becomes more and more expensive each year to, to make this operate in terms of insurance and health and safety, et cetera.

We strongly resist putting prices up as well because we, you know, we know time's hard for everybody and, and we'd rather get more people through the gate paying a reasonable amount than, than try and get more money out of a few people. So, so yeah, the more people that come and support us, the, the longer we can go without raising prices and just make it bigger and better for, for Scarborough."

Andy says Oliver's Mount is a special venue offering the only place in England and Scotland where racing takes place on the road.

"It's absolutely unique , it is the only place in, in the whole of England and Scotland where we get to close the road and do 160 miles an hour on a, on a normal road.

And, you know, unless you're in. Island or, or the island, man. It just doesn't happen. So this really is a jewel in the crown for Scarborough and it served the people of Scarborough well, it's brought a lot of tourism and money into the economy for the last, almost 80 years now. And it's, in this day and age, it's, it gets harder and harder to keep something like this going, but we've, we've gotta keep it going for the, for the benefit of, uh, of Scarborough really in the heritage."

Gates for camping open from 2:00 pm on Friday. For day visitors, the on-track action is scheduled to start at 9:00 am and could run until 6:00 pm each day. Access over the weekend is via Mount Side, with parking available in the top field. Mere Lane will be closed.

Looking ahead, Andy says that Oliver's Mount Racing Limited has a calendar of events planned for 2025,

"Unfortunately we lost the Spring Cup this year, but , we kick off with the main events with the Cook of the North on the 21st, 22nd of June.

We've got the Barine Festival on the 19th, 20th of July, um, which is a bit of a mix of, uh, classic and modern bikes. And then we've got the Blue Ribbon event  on the. 13th, 14th of September, which is the Steve Henshaw Gold Cup. We've got another really good value hill climb,  in the middle of August

and then the week after that August Bank holiday weekend, we've got the return of the British Supermoto Championship, which hopefully I'll be riding in myself as well"

There are more details about this weekend's racing at https://oliversmount.com/events/2025-sorrymate-com-may-motorcycle-hill-climb/