This weekend we headed to Culham for the final round of the Plews Tyres British Masters. Having raced most of the season on a 65cc I was quite nervous having to race my SW85 at a track I’ve not ridden for over a year against some of the fastest SW85 riders in the country.
Qualifying didn’t go too badly I was running 6th but I messed up the last two laps of qualifying which dropped me to 9th gate pick for the weekend.
The First days racing I was pretty nervous and not feeling that confident and still getting use to the track. In the first race I knew I wasn’t riding to my full potential, got a reasonable start 6th place lacking some confidence I dropped to 8th.
The second race we tried a different tyre got a good start 4th around the first corner. As the race continued I was in a comfortable 6th but had abit of a lapse on the last couple of laps and got passed, I was in 7th but under alot of pressure from riders behind me and something seemed to click and my aggression kick back in. I got my head down and almost passed 6th place back.
On the Second day I was feeling a lot more confident and was feeling more comfortable about the SW85 riders. 3rd race of the weekend. I was very determined and I got the holeshot. I struggled a bit with the front runners pace but I settled into 6th in a group of 4 riders battling for the positions and I felt comfortable with the pace which gave me more confidence. Finishing the race in 6th which I was really happy about then I had to get on the podium because I won the rip and roll holeshot prize winning a pair of goggles.
Final race and another holeshot… the front runners were quite a bit more aggressive than me so I dropped to 5th. On lap 3 I was feeling really good and I felt I could ride faster then the guys infront of me. Lap by lap I passed each one finding even more speed I closed down second and put an aggressive pass on him. I couldn’t believe what I was doing and I could see first place in the distance. I put in the fastest lap of the race on the last lap and only missed out winning the race by 0.18. Crossed the finish line with loads of people going crazy and congratulating me. I was still in a bit of disbelief of what I just done but absolutely pumped that I had just proved to myself what I can actually achieve when I put my mind to it. My results were 8th, 7th, 6th and 2nd which gave me 5th overall for the weekend.
