Oulton Park – Round 8
Friday – it rained all day on Friday and it was the first time out for us on the new 07 Honda. I found that the suspension settings we had were too hard and we made a lot of changes for the second session and I ended the day in 11th place with a best time 1.56.68. I was pretty pleased with how the day went and looking forward to the rest of the weekend.
Saturday – It’s the first time in a long while that I woke up and saw that it was actually dry outside. This meant it was my first time on the new bike in the dry, in the first session we struggled to get the suspension set up on the dry track and had a few problems with the slipper clutch. For the second session we changed the springs in the forks and adjusted the clutch, the bike was definitely better but not 100 percent. I managed to put in a best time of 1.43.1 and qualified 22nd on the grid. I wasn’t overly happy with my position on the grid but was looking forward to the race and was kind of hoping that it would be wet.
Sunday- As I went to the race truck in the morning it started raining, which I was secretly pleased about as I knew we would have a good chance of a good result if it was wet. In warm up my visor was holding water and couldn’t see anything but was still 13th fastest and was feeling confident as we headed for the race.
In the race I got a good start and gained seven places on the first lap, then I settled down a little, putting in consistently fast times to pull myself up through the field to get to eighth place - just missing out on seventh on the line. I am pleased with result but shows how important qualifying is, because if we were further up the grid, I felt I could have run with the front boys, as I was doing near enough the same times as them. Overall it was a good weekend as it was always going to be hard with riding the new bikes for the first time at Oulton. Just wait until we got a few races under our belt! I would like to thank Centurion Racing for producing the new bikes, which is going to be the key to a good second half to the season. Thanks to all the mechanics especially Alan and Paul on what was a hard weekend. Happy birthday to Lucy ‘lofty’ Jones!
thanks
Dan #20
