| Team Flitwick 2012 road race plans sorted..It has taken Team Flitwick until just one month prior to the start of TT 2012, and less than three weeks before my first major outing at the NW200, to confirm this years road race plans.
Thankfully, my loyal band of friends and partners have come good, and I will line up as the last seeded rider at number 20 on the grid with the very competitive SMV owned R6 Supersport machine. I am confident of building on my 16th place finish at my last TT in 2010, along with upping my already very respectable Supersport lap times of well over 120mph.
The team are seeing TT 2012 as the final part of my recovery after the horrendous 2010 MGP accident suffered whilst battling for the lead of the post classic race with Michael Dunlop. My major sponsor Steve Bond has taken it upon himself to fund a 2012 Superstock Fireblade for use in all three of the TT litre races; with the help of Clive Padgett we have a Package that should suit me for my comeback campaign!
True to family tradition, Dad and I have been burning the midnight oil and using our engineering skills to think outside of the box together, and have developed a Suzuki based machine for the new lightweight TT supertwin race that is, shall we say, somewhat different - so watch this space! The Flitwick Motorcycles backed machine will certainly be a head turner when it starts at number 14.....
Consiering that an engineer can now to a certain extent go to work in the new class, and the idea that a vast majority of competitors have no recent experience on small twins, you can understand the teams excitement. Combine this with the fact that I am essentially a small bike rider, I might be seen as a possible dark horse. My lap record shattering lap of 111.8mph from a standing start in MGP practice on the 1972 500cc Twin Cylinder Paton backs this up further.
Up until very recently it was not in the teams plans to compete at the Northwest 200 as a vital warm up for TT 2012, purely due to the financial constraints in these difficult times. There was however a ray of light at the end of the tunnel, and a new backer has joined the Flitwick Motorcycles Racing clan in the form of Northern Irish company Regal Leisure ltd, who join long term backer Wheeler Electrical with much needed help toward running costs, in what will hopefully turn into a long lasting partnership.
Roll on May, I can't wait for my return to the Triangle and mountain course, and to spend time once more within the most friendly paddocks in the world! | | Emra buildbase championship round one...At the very beginning of March it was time to start my 2012 season in earnest. Dad proclaimed that "it should be illegal to race a bike in this country before the 1st April". But I stood fast and argued that I needed as much time on a bike before the TT as I could get...... My year on a bike had in fact started before the beginning of March, at a bright and sunny Mallory Park on a test day on the 29th February. That test turned out nearly perfect, just like the weather, and I got down to a very respectable lap time given the fact that it was only ever intended to dial myself in, and I took the scalps of a few good British championship runners. Had dad not forgotten the sprockets, it couldn't have gone much better...... :p
Just four days later, it was time for the racing proper. For the remainder of the week the weather had quickly deteriorated, and we awake at home on the Sunday morning to howling winds and very heavy rain. It was almost tempting to roll over and go back to sleep, but the entries were paid and van packed.....and besides, the fact that I was entered in an open race on the SMV 600, might give me an advantage. Because let's face it, Mallory Park isn't even the right place for a 200bhp Superbike in the dry!
Upon arriving we quickly got the bike and my kit scrutineered, as well setting up the little gazebo; the full awning would have been a bit overkill for one day and one bike..... At least there wasn't the difficulty in choosing the correct tyres, which we had feared when looking at the forecast on Saturday. Wet (very wet) is wet, and it's nice when it goes one way or the other. I had entered the 175-1300cc open race and formula 600 class, as well as the title race the 'BuildBase Trophy', but was disappointed that I was required to go out in every single practice session to avoid starting from the back of the grid. The problem with wet tyres is that they wear out so quickly, especially somewhere like Mallory Park. This can become a major problem when you have four ten lap and one fifteen lap race during the day, the problem being the need to set a competitive time in every session and therefore the inability to waste time scrubbing in new tyres at the start of each very short session. But at the same time you do not want to start any races later in the day on a completely unused tyre. What a dilema!
Upon getting out on track I was very glad to realise that Mallory was not the ice skating rink it had been in the wet at the beginning of the 2011 season, but was in fact reasonably grippy. It had been since 2008 that I'd been on a short circuit in the wet on a modern bike and tyres, so I just slowly built up to it (getting EXTREMELY cold in the process!) and was pleased to see my positions when I came in. For the open race I would start from 5th on the grid, was in second place for the 600 class and managed to put it on pole position by over a second for the BuildBase trophy race! Not bad when you consider it was against full blown Superbikes and I hadn't really tried yet. It was also a big relief to mum, dad and everyone involved that I seemingly hadn't lost any of my finesse in the wet. With there being so many practice sessions and races in just one day I was very impressed with the way the club was being run, and it seemed only a matter of minutes that we had to change the gearing and get out onto the grid for race one, the Ducati Coventry JHP 175-1300cc race. |
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