Mallory Round 5 and 6 30th April and 1st May 2006

Mallory park was a complete disaster. It started on Friday when we came over for a test on a track day. The bike developed the same fault we experienced at Brands with the engine cutting out on one cylinder. During the test we thought we’d solved it when the bike worked fine for the two final sessions (on the original circuit not the modified track we’d be running for the weekend), which is about all I could manage with my week wrist fresh from having the cast removed and visiting the bone welder.

The first two qualifying sessions were basically a chance for me to find my way around the new circuit and get my self back into the swing of riding after my big crash at Brands. We ended up being 8th and on the second row after the two sessions, which considering everyone else was up to race speed having already competed in a ¼ of the season already, I was pretty happy with. Goal for the weekend was to get into the top 5 and do 1.01’s…

We didn’t get that far however, I did the warmup lap for the superpole race on Sunday and then sat on the grid waiting for the lights to go out…. They went out and I let the clutch out but nothing! The bike didn’t move and then struggled to pull away. Mean time the people on the next three rows did their best to avoid my almost stationary bike. I prayed that what ever the problem was would clear like it did at brands but I made it as far as the esses on one cylinder and pulled in. Scott Thompson crashed and the race had been stopped anyway so I went straight back to the pit and stripped bits off the bike to try and cure it before the restart. We just built it back and were ready to go as the riders pulled back to their grid positions from their two warmup laps. I ask the officials if I could start from pitlane and it was agreed… The lights went out I let the clutch out and immediately the engine went on to one cylinder and began to back fire through the other. I didn’t even make it out of pit lane!

We spent all evening and all the next day swapping everything possible on the bike in an attempt to cure it but we didn’t get it fixed unfortunately so another wasted weekend. On top of that the van engine developed a serious fault on the way home on Monday so we are faced with a large bill to pay for that too…

We’ll not be at the France round as we need to concentrate on getting everything fixed. But we’ll be back in action at Snetterton in June MRO onwards and we’ll also be competing in the UKGPRA round in August at Oulton Park.

Hopefully that’s all our bad luck for the year and we can get back to what we do best.