0 Rain, Rain, Go Away..........................

Oulton Park BSB 16-17 July
Looking forward to the weekend but unfortunately we didn’t get off to the best start. We set off for Oulton Park at around 4:30pm on Friday and arrived at the circuit around 7pm. The ‘jobsworth’ on the gate then informed us that we were too late to be allowed into the paddock to set up and would have to park up in the car park until the morning. This is obviously not ideal as we wanted to get the caravan set up and do some work on the bike prior to our practice early on Saturday morning. So I made a team decision to totally ignore him and carried on to the paddock! It amazes me how the organisers assume that people don’t have day jobs and think we can get to the circuit anytime that they decree. We are restricted a little on what times we can set off for the meeting, it may be unfortunate that we can’t get to the circuit in a reasonable time but I really do think the organisers should give a bit of slack on these occasions. Any way that is my rant over with, just needed to get that off my chest!
Firstly a big thanks to Ian at Harley and the rest of the guys who had managed to do a sterling job of getting the bike repaired, Leigh and I only had a bit of fettling to do on the Friday night to get us ready for Free Practice on Saturday.

Free Practice
Saturday morning came and as predicted the weather was very poor and had been raining from around 5am so the track was well and truly wet. We fitted the wets to the bike, check the tyre pressures and headed out for Free Practice. As it was my first time back on a bike since the crash at Knockhill I was probably taking it a little cautious although the track did seem to be very slippery in these conditions, especially when compared to Knockhill and Thruxton which both had really good grip in the wet. I got myself settled back into the swing of things and finished the session in 9th place, not too bad but not really setting the world on fire.

Qualifying
Amazingly the track had tried by the time it came around for our qualifying session. So with dry tyres fitted and the suspension settings changed off we went. Again I was probably a bit over cautious at not wanting to damage the bike again after our last outing and didn’t really feel as if I was pushing on too well. I finished the session in 9th place, a bit disappointed to be on the 3rd row of the grid but I knew we still had a lot more in the bag come race day. At least I had the company of the Mrs for the evening as she had driven up from her Rollerderby activates in Wakefield. Unfortunately for Leigh this meant we got the double bed in the caravan and he was relegated to the slightly smaller single. As the single is not the largest bed in the world and Leigh is not the smallest bloke, it was amusing watching him trying to make himself fit! Still, at least he wasn’t on the bunk!

Race
As there are noise restrictions in place at Oulton Park due to the neighbouring church, nothing happens on a Sunday until 12 o’clock! This is not all bad as it means we got a lay in for a change. We were awoken though to the pitter patter of rain on the caravan roof and knew we were in for another day of inclement weather. Amazingly the weather forecast for the weekend had actually been right; although this time we didn’t want it to be. There were two races prior to ours, the British Superbike race and the National Superstock race, the former had a number of crashes and had a lot of laps run under the safety car whilst the latter was red flagged after only four laps and declared a result. This was not looking too good. Due to these issues and with time being of a premium due to the TV coverage the decision was taken to reduce the number of laps our race was to be run over from 10 laps to 5 laps. With the weather as bad as it was this was not a bad thing.
We lined up on the grip and waited for the lights. I made a reasonable start a fed into 8th place as we rounded the first corner. The water spray from the bikes in front was amazing and it made it very difficult to actually see where I was going. The first eight bikes were nose to tail as completed the first lap but as we came up to Lodge corner on the second lap James Webb crashed out taking Rob McNealy with him, and the rest of us having to take avoiding action. This was lucky as a whole load more of us could have gone down as well. I now found myself in 5th place and sat on the back of the leading group. I was quite comfortable at this pace and made a pass on Gary Byrne to take 4th. I was looking to line up Torquil Paterson for 3rd when Gary made a pass back on me again onto Lodge corner. Starting the last lap Leigh put out +8 seconds on my pitboard and this meant I had a big gap to the guy behind me. I then took the decision that ‘discretion was the better part of valour’ and brought the bike home in 5th place but ready to do battle again another day. Not a bad result for the weekend and if we hadn’t suffered the crash at Knockhill I would have probably stuck my neck out a bit more but may be that is an age thing? I was happy enough with the result though and the fact we were in the battle for podium positions. Again though our speed through the traps was very good, as we were 2nd fastest through two of the speed traps and quickest through the other. This showed we were a) getting good drive off the corners and b) getting a good slipstream from the bikes in front of us. Either way we know our bike is not lacking in the speed department. It is just up to me to get it around the corners once we eliminate the lessening handling issues. We do have some parts on there way from the US of A which we are hopeful will cure these woes for our next outing.

For further info check out the series website at http://xr1200trophy.harley-davidson.co.uk/

The next meeting is at Brands Hatch in Kent on the 5th-7th August, so if you can make it, please come along and offer your support, if not you can catch the races live on Eurosport or check the live timing at TSL Timing (http://www.tsl-timing.com/?loc=major&season=2011&series=BSB&event=races)