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Oulton Park, Round 2
14th May 2009

Anglesey, Round1

Hi guys!

Saturday 18th April saw us at Oulton Park for round 2 of the Wirral 100 motorcycle club races, and what a meeting it was, firstly it was sunny from the off which is always a good start.

Oulton is always popular and as a result they had to run power bikes in our class as there were so many and as one of them has been running No33 for twenty years I was forced (not without protest!!) to run 133, oh well, it turned out not to be a bad luck omen…

I kept the same suspension settings from Anglesey for the practice session and they worked well but come the qualifying race the rear tyre had started to go off and was moving about a little so we kept reducing the hot tyre pressures and took off 2 clicks of rear compression damping.

Up against a strong field of 33 riders in the qualifier, littered with 1000cc power bikes it was going to be tough to finish high up the order. I had been going around the circuit in my mind all week and with new plans for ‘Island bend’, the run up to ‘Druids’ and better braking for the last turn, ‘Lodge’ my plan was to Go Big and attack….
I managed to finish 20th on the road and 3rd in my class so I was well happy with that. James came back with the time sheets smiling so I knew it was good news, I’d also managed to knock a massive 3 seconds off my personal best around Oulton, I was ecstatic! I even felt like I could have gone faster…

Garry the circuit commentator had emailed me the day before to go and see him, so off I popped with my brother Bob up to the commentary tower to have a wee chat about my racing and give him some personal details about ourselves, what a nice guy.

My finish had meant that I had qualified on the second row in 6th position, that’ll do me I thought, my best finish to date in the final was 9th so this was my chance to pull it out the bag. Because I was having problems with the rear, my brief off Paul (Debnam-California Superbike School top man) was to feel it for the first lap and if it was still sliding to bring it home rather than risk it. My start was just ‘ok’ as usual but I made up places in the first two corners to make up for it. I was lapping well but along came three power bikes which saw me drop down to 9th on the road, I was alright with this as I wasn’t competing against these boys. The blow for me came on the last lap when I was mugged going through Hissy’s chicane and shown the edge of the track which cost me time. I crossed the line in 10th which meant I was 7th in my class, best result so far, mega…

Rob had ridden out of his skin for his second race to finish 18th and Richie was ahead in 17th. Martyn also had an awesome ride on his ‘ally’ framed 600 to come in 9th in which was also his second race, top work all round boys.

A big thank you to Paul, Geoff, Alan, Brian, Davy, Rob, Sousa, Lisa, Carla and Cairnsey for coming to support us, you guys turned a great meeting into a fantastic meeting.

Hope to see you all again on May 25th (bank holiday Monday) at Anglesey for Round 3.

Kettle will be on…