Cadwell Park Rounds 6/7
Arriving at Cadwell brought back some happy memories. Not only the scene of a titanic battle between myself and the Reaper in 2005 where I squeezed between him and pit wall to take the win by 6/100ths of a second but where I was also awarded the ‘Man of the Meeting’ award for my efforts. This weekend was to be a fair way away from that performance however. Saturday’s qualifier went ok, and I expected to be off the pace a little first thing in the morning though two and a half seconds off the pace was more than I’d expected. Saturday’s final was dreadful. I had the worst start ever and reached the first corner well down the field. I think I spent most of the first lap wondering what on earth I was doing there. It was only about by about half way around the second lap that I finally pulled my finger out ( to avoid the humiliation of being beaten by Mini-Twins more than anything else!). I battled on through and got up to 5th but as I got to the last corner on the last lap, a faller had caused the red flags to come out so the result was taken from our positions the lap before. The three people I’d overtaken the lap before didn’t count therefore and I finished 8th. Rubbish. A fall from Graham meant at least I took away more points than he did!
Sunday wasn’t much better.. Every start I’d made all weekend was terrible and it was getting to me. There was no consistency in what it would do. Every time I’d pull away ok but as soon as I’d travelled a few yards, the front wheel would go skywards and I’d be struggling to get the front wheel down again. It was only by Sunday afternoon that I felt I had an idea of what had been going on. The slipper clutch (which, thinking about it now, I realised had been fitted when I began having starting problems) was re-engaging of it’s own accord just as I was driving away hard, almost snatching the clutch lever out of my hand as I tried to feed it out. With this in mind I just pulled away slowly for the final, waiting till I was rolling to short shift up to 2nd gear and drive away with the wheel on the ground. Not ideal but better. Compton had blown his bike up in the morning after breaking the SoT lap record so he wasn’t joining us in the points race. A few minor adjustments to Spidey had allowed me to find a second a lap which helped keep in touch with the leaders for a bit longer but I still didn’t feel totally comfortable with the bike and I struggled to keep the pace up, finishing 6th, unable to do a trademark ‘Peck-pounce’ across the line even though the guy just ahead of me was on a more standard version of my bike and should have been easy prey. My 18 points total for the weekend wasn’t as bad as it could have been as their DNFs meant that although they had been faster than me all weekend, Graham only took away 16 points and Mark 20. I would have preferred to have been a contender than a consistent finisher though. Still, at least we’d learnt enough to know the slipper clutch was going in the bin before Brands!
Beccie had a much more productive weekend. On Sunday afternoon, she’d gone with the team to watch the Powerbike race from the grandstand while I went to race control to get the times and results from the race office. I ran all the way to find where they were sat. “There’s good news and there’s bad news” I said. “The good news is that you’ve been and qualified for the 600 ‘A’ final, the bad news is that means you’re out next!”. It was a bit of a rush but we got her out in time. Another personal goal ticked off the list!