Race 9
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| St Michaels on Wyre (2 Day)
Firstly I have to apologise for the serious lack of pictures from this event. Someone who shall remain nameless was supposed to take them and all we ended up with was one! Day one of this weekends meetings was the ORPA national shootout for 50 and 65cc bikes only and a lot of really good riders came from all over to get their hands on some nice prizes such as PS2's. Both the autos and 65's were randomly split into A & B groups, all having 4 blocks of racing. When those points were added up, it left us with an A final and a support race in both classes. Given the calibre of riders I would have been lucky to make the A and would no doubt have finished last if I did. Many of the riders had over a years worth of racing experience over me and there were some really quick lads out there. Even Sam Wragg, who usually takes winning at local races for granted had a hard time in the A final and really had to ride as hard as he could to 3rd place. I had started the day far too slowly to make the A but my speed improved as the day went on. This track is fast and I went as fast as I dared go yet and finished up in the support race. I had a pretty good race in this and was looking like getting 9th spot but in the last 1/2 lap managed to close the gap to the guy in front and just nipped past over the last table top and pulled away down the finish straight to 8th place. 8th in the support race gave me 32nd overall in the ORPA national event, not too bad but a definite 'could do better' on the report card. With 5 races though it was a very tiring day but great fun. In the 65cc support race, my friend Kyle Myatt rode his heart out after being very unlucky in the qualifying races and finished with his first ever win...... and on his birthday too! We were all really pleased for Kyle, he really deserved it the way he rode. Ryan Elliott had his ups and downs on the day too and finished 9th in the 65cc support after a slow start like me. All in all we were all pretty happy to have done so well in what was always going to be a very hard meeting full of some of the country's best 50/65cc riders. Day 2 was a 'normal' club meeting but many of the riders from day 1 had stayed over to race day 2 so again it wasn't going to be as easy as the usual local club meetings. I finished race 1 in 23rd after letting my 19th place on lap 1 slip away gradually. The track was watered shortly before race 2 and left some slippy patches, one of which caught me out at the end of lap 1. I had been running 14th after a really good start when I entered a sweeping left hander and the front end washed out on a wet patch. I got back up almost last and made my way back up to 24th by the end of the race. Dad wasn't too happy but did appreciate how well I rode apart from this one error. The last race raised dads blood pressure through the roof however and I learnt a valuable lesson from it. I had battled all weekend with No 21 and we had each been better on one part of the track than the other and vice versa. He passed me cleanly in the last race and I just couldn't pull it back. I had 3 more chasing me and tried to keep them off for the last 1/2 of the race but as I came onto the finish straight and saw the flag I slowed up, allowing one of the following riders to pass with only yards to go to the flag! Dad's still got a croaky voice from all the shouting he did cheering us on all day but I think that incident really finished off his vocal chords. Well hopefully I won't do that again in a hurry anyway. Neither Kyle or Ryan had an easy day either, again with so many fast lads staying over again it was going to be a struggle for us all. Kyle managed to stay upright and Ryan followed my lead to drop the bike in one race, right after making a perfect move, diving underneath another KX on one corner only to drop it on the next. Oh well, that's racing. We're off to Peacocks Hey again next weekend for another couple of rounds of the Red Dragons championship. Hopefully being back with the normal club riders should see things a bit easier on us all. |
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