Well, where do I start?!
Added on Thursday, July 21st, 2011 by Carole Nash Editor
Well, where do I start?!
Saturday came with all the rain, as expected! Practice was brief with a good feel for the bike, even using some old wets. Then we sat and waited and waited and waited. The delay lasted until around dinner time and the track was really flooded in places with lots of standing water at the essess and going into Lunar. Eventually after some amazing work by all the marshals and officials, we got on the track for what would be the only races of the day - points and trophies for the same race.
By the time we had got to our first race, it had stopped raining, the track was drying and we had to fit some dry’s back into the little Kwak. Then, about 2mins before the race (the open class), it chucked it down again!!! RUBBISH!!! We quickly swapped the dry out and fitted a wet in the front but time was against us and unfortunately we had to run the dry rear!! This was not going to be fun.
We chose a rubbish peg (10) and lined up as the rain continued to fall, I really thought about pulling, like so many others, but as this was the only points race of the day and we were currently leading the championship, I thought better of it!
I had a good start and ran up to third place but grip some became a problem on the entry of the turns, we plodded on going as fast as possible but those around us with wets fitted just kept coming past. The laps felt like an eternity, slide after slide after slide, they felt huge, although I’m sure they probably weren’t. The chequered flag waived me over the line in a lonely 5th place, gutted as I know we have the pace in the wet (with the right tyres!!) Eddie Oscar took a good win leading by some margin.
The twins race was a different affair, we lined up in 9th place with all the usual chaps ahead of me, I was so angry with my first race ride and was determined to take a podium in this one. The rain had now held off for about an hour and the track was pretty much dry. We got a cracking start and slotted in behind Nigel Rae going down the hill, Nigel was riding well considering he had taken a tumble early on on his Yamaha R6, but it didn’t look like it had slowed him down!
Three laps in, I out braked Nige going down to the essses and made it stick. Pit signals had me with a three second lead which we controlled from the front, Joe Ravenscroft was pressing hard but just ran out of time to do anything about the gap and finished just over three seconds down over the line, with an impressive third for Nigel Rae.
Now Sunday was a different story!! We woke to the same rubbish, damp weather but this time we encountered a problem with the 650!!! Shock horror!! A 10p resistor decided it had had enough of all the rain and just couldn’t carry on! This problem took us about three hours to sort and by the time we had finished the rain was coming down so hard they cancel the remaining races. This was a massive blow to us, as we had missed both the mornings trophy races, which they then decided to award points for too - nooooooooooo!
This meant we had lost the lead in the 650 twins race to Nigel Rae by 12points, but thankfully remain at the top of the Open class by three points. This means the remaining two rounds are going to be really important and we are going to have to make sure the little Kwak is in tip-top form going into them.
