Mallory Park – Round 9
Friday - The conditions on track were very wet and once I had done a few laps to check my gearing and set up of the bike I pulled in because I didn’t think there was any point in carrying on. I ended the session in 11th position. After this I was to lose one of my best friends, Ollie Bridewell in an incident that occurred at the track. I thought of him as my brother and I am totally gutted that he’s gone. We didn’t go out again on Friday.
Saturday - The weather was very much the same as Friday, which resulted in long delays, we managed to get one practice session in the afternoon. Which I ended up 4th, I was very pleased as the riders in front of me would of had new tyres for this session where I was using the tyres I had for the race at Oulton Park last weekend. I found it very hard riding the track on Saturday after what had happened with Ollie the previous day. I had to concentrate hard on keeping focused and trying not to think about the accident.
Sunday- I woke to see glorious sunshine and I wasn’t too sure how I felt about this as we hadn’t had a dry practice previously on the new 07 bikes. We had a 30 minute practice session and I managed to get down to a decent lap time and ended the session 11th. I was looking forward to the race. I got a terrible start but then made a few places going round Gerrards and ended the first lap in around 15th place. It took me a while to get past Paul Young and once I had done that the group in front of me had pulled a slight gap. I set off after this group and with around ten laps to go I had caught them. I got past Aaron Walker when he made a mistake at the first chicane and next in my sights was my team mate Westy, this is when I realised that my rear tyre wasn’t quite as good as Westy’s and I couldn’t get the power down out of the corner to get close enough to him to make a pass on him. Martin Jessopp then came past with two laps to go and I ended up finishing the race in 13th position. I was pleased with this as it has been the hardest weekend I have ever had.
“Ollie mate our weekends out having fun will never quite be the same but we will try and have fun and I am sure you will be up there watching us, making sure we are doing it right. I will miss you dear bruv. R.I.P #46″
Dan #20
