On the weekend we went to the second round of the Plews British Masters Championship. Competing at one of the highest levels of racing in the UK on the mighty sand track of Hawkstone Park. I woke up Saturday feeling quite nervous and thought out the day.
Qualifying didn’t go too well this is something I need to work on going forward. I qualified P13 so that was my gate pick for the weekend.
For race 1 I was still a bit nervous and Hawkstone has a concrete start which as the gate dropped my back end slid out so wasn’t the best of starts. I was about 15th around first corner and battled my way through 7th on the first lap. On lap three I managed to get into 3rd place but the leaders were well gone so I settled for 3rd place.
Race 2, slightly better start but my gear change was getting a little bit difficult to change up underload. I was 10th around the first corner, I got into second for a short time and was battling hard with Roy Townley when I went down in a corner. Got up quickly but struggled to start the bike as I left it in gear and my wheel and forks were twisted in the clamps. I did a lap with the front wheel not being straight, I pulled into the mechanics area to get this sorted but that cost me 6 more places and finished P15 which I was very angry about.
I told my dad it was getting harder and harder to select higher gears so he replaced my clutch and checked the selector mechanism but there was nothing else he could do track side.
Day two and race 3 was another bad start, gears still playing up, battled really hard to get into 3rd and to add insult to injury my bike developed a mis-fire. The bike was really struggling up the one big hill at Hawkstone Park so I was having to push extra hard to make up the time lost every time I went up the hill. Finished in P3.
Race 4 I just had to ride the bike with the same problems struggled off the start again. Pushed as hard as I possible could but the bike got worse throughout the race and the best I could do was P6. Which my mum and dad couldn’t believe how high up I finished with the bike so difficult to ride. I was amazed to finish 4th overall, I was left wondering what I could of achieved if my bike was 100%.
