The Dreadded Knockhill
Added on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 by Carole Nash Editor
The Dreadded Knockhill
Hello all.It’s been a while since I last spoke to you all and in truth, this wasn’t a weekend that I had been looking forward to!
I’ve been at Knockhill and I’ve was dreading this round all year! But when we got there the team boss Axel Berstrom said he would teach me the best way to approach the track, he said to me to treat the track like a motocross track, ride the curbs, there are a lot of blind tight corners here so I did, and it worked!
I loved the track, I was having so much fun and then…it went wrong… the engine blew! The team stayed up all night and rebuilt it for the next days qualifying sessions.
Qualifying was going well, I was in the first 3 with 10 mins to go but disaster struck and the engine blew again! I ended up in 14th place on the grid so I had a lot of work to do in the race. The track is very small and doesn’t have many places to pass but I knew I could make places.
The race started and it was going well I had just got up to 7th place and started to catch the front group, I didn’t see the black and yellow flag until it was too late. I had to pull in from the race and I was gutted! I was told the engine was smoking again, it was heart breaking.
The team needed to sort the problem out so this week the engineers have spoken to the Kawasaki factory and they have helped solve the problem. It was a valve in the gear box causing the oil to start burning which was in turn caused the smoke.
I’m hoping for the next round at Brands Hatch I will be on the top step! I will speak to you all after Brands.
Best Wishes
Howie
#43
