The echo of the memory persisted as we woke on Saturday morning before practice , lots of rain and a little wind, Cadwell Park is nothing if not consistent in it's meteorological offerings...We were to be hosted by the newly invigorated Derby Phoenix club which has lost nothing of its friendly welcoming atmosphere but also gained the ruthless efficiency of Dave and Bernadette Stewart who I'm always glad to see at the helm...
The wet conditions got me all excited as although I don't particularly like racing in wet conditions (who does?) I do seem to go well in the wet and wet conditions go a long way to level off any performance discrepancies with the faster bikes..and once you're mounted and on track riding in the wet really isn't so bad and more recently my wet riding confidence has had a massive boost from the remarkable Continental Race Attack tyres that I'm really getting on well with..so much so that I was the only MotoE bike that elected to go out for the morning warm up at 9am... there's nothing quite like having a racetrack to yourself.. :) I had a jolly nice ride round and re-familiarised my self with the Cadwell layout which I know quite well having ridden here so often..
Afternoon qualifying was dry and sunny and went very well, I was several seconds faster than my team mates and I think going out for the tentative wet warm up in the morning enabled me to go out with full confidence in the afternoon dry conditions..Unfortunately for my team mates one of the reasons I was so much faster is that the returning rider Ho Chi Fung took a bit of a risk early on in the session and wiped out his team mate Chun kay Kwok who crashed heavily along with one of the Ducatis we were out with and broke his collarbone putting him out of action for a couple of weeks at least... The bike wasn't too heavily damaged and the Zongshen team swarmed around the bike and it was repaired in no time flat..
For the first 'sprint' race for which conditions were perfect I was instructed to occupy grid position 4 despite qualifying in 2nd the previous day..which was slightly confusing.. however with only 5 bikes on the grid and my bike being by far the slowest away it didn't really matter where I started from the end result would be the same.. I would be the last into the first corner..I set about making up what I could in the corners.. I shadowed the Brammo for the first lap and narrowly missed running into Max Simmons as he accidentally 'chinned' the emergency stop and then looked ahead to see if I could gain any time on Ho Chi Fung as he rode the second factory Zonngshen that had recently been vacated by Chun Kay Kwok...that didn't look like it was likely as although I was running with the little satellite Zonngshen 'turned up' a little bit it still wasn't a match for the factory bike who was pulling a mighty lead early on...that didn't last long though, as I entered Coppice I saw the tell-tale scrape lines from the gel-coat fairing that indicated Ho Chi Fung had slid off as he tipped in for Charlie's 'in'. I accepted the place with good grace and got my head down to try and catch the Agni bike which was performing very well.. as the race developed and the gaps between us began to grow I noticed the Nottingham bike with Daley Matheson on board stationary at the side of the track on Park Straight. This elevated me to second place and the Agni which was now beyond reach to first place I started to gain on the Agni as he reduced his pace to improve his chances of finishing..a smart move from a very accomplished young rider who increased his pace again as he saw me gaining ground...
The second longer 'endurance' race was less eventful, we lost Daley with a bike issue on the warm up lap and Ho Chi Fung stayed mounted this time to chase down and pass the Agni bike for the well deserved win. I had to watch again as both the Agni and Zongshen factory bike gained over half a lap on me to battle for the lead leaving me to mop up the final place for third,.
With all the various crashes and machine issues this weekend my consistency and the reliability of the lower performance Zongshen remarkably sees me leave Cadwell this weekend leading the championship by 10 points.. an unexpected treat for sure but you do have to be 'in it to win it' as they say and without the commitment of Darvill Racing's Alex Aitchison and Insight 2 Value as sponsors we wouldn't be able to capitalise on these small victories..
I'm looking forward to Pembrey and to seeing if there is any explanation to why my bike has such a performance deficit...
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