British Championship Round 4 - Oulton Park Apri/May 2005

Have you noticed that there is no report from round three? We had a disastrous weekend. Least said, best forgot!!!

Round 4 was I thought to have been a different story; with Alex having raced here only weeks before, us having the ability for the first time since the first round at Brands Hatch to down-load some of the onboard data logging and starting to solve some of the mechanical problems that has plagued us since the first round, the team were very hopeful of another good result.

Throughout practice and qualifying we were still testing settings, some work some times they don't, These are not excuses they are reasons for Alex's poor showing in the last races on what is without a doubt a fantastic bike, it has been a massive jump for the team to this level of competition.

Primarily different fuel has been the biggest challenge, new tracks and with very little back up and 4 rounds in 6 weeks does not allow for a lot of R&D. However we are learning fast & the official times do not tell the full story, although Alex only qualified 31 out of the 45 strong grid, this did not reflect his true pace and were very optimistic for the race. This was borne out by morning warm-up held in glorious sun sine, where he posted his fastest time round this track a 1:52.523 with still some big improvements to be made to his bikes set-up which we knew would make the bike faster in the race.

Before Alex's race which had been scheduled for 16.35 the second last race of the day; the heavens opened, this is not a problem in itself as we have a pretty good wet set-up, the problem was that now the rain had stopped and the track was drying which would be the correct set up for the race. We opted for a wet set-up, our thinking was simple, Alex has not finished the last two races, if we sent him out on slicks and fell of due to the conditions; at least with the wet set up if the tyres went off he could slow and at least finish the race.

It was obvious as the bikes assembled at the holding grid no one was certain what the weather was going to do half the bikes had slicks the other half with wet tyres on. Then with minutes to go it started to rain and a mad scramble to a wet set up for every one.

In the race Alex made a fantastic start making his way on the first lap up to 20 th place, by lap 2 of the 14 lap race he was up to 18 th and had made his way into a very distinguished pack consisting of Web, Westmoreland & Ford, the four riders separated by just 1 sec.

As they crossed the start finish line, on lap four the four were separated by just 0.5 of a second; this was great racing, watching Alex in this company was very encouraging until the sixth lap when he never came round, he had braked that little bit to hard for “Druids” and it was over, a very disappointing end to an encouraging weekend.

Thanks to the good Samaritan who pulled the gun away from my head after I seen the damage to the bike!!!!