Day 2 – Four seasons in one day
We arrived at the track at around 0830, not having a race till after 1730 we had plenty of time to have a good look around the track and watch the Motogp classes do their thing. Was very cool watching the 125’s at a couple of different corners.
The weather was changeable all day, the wind however had changed direction and was now blowing from the south and the temperatures weren’t very nice either. I think the mercury was hovering around 10 degrees all day combined with intermittent showers. This made it very difficult for the GP guys but as the day went on the cloud seemed to break and there weren’t any more showers till about 1600, when the superbikes went out for their first race. We still had an hour and a half before our race so I was still confident we would get to race in the dry.
Due to the rain showers coming over during the superbike race the meeting was declared wet. This meant that if it rained during our race it wouldn’t be stopped for everyone to come in and change to wets. We lined up and waited for the second supersport race to finish. I could see the black clouds brewing in the distance and had my fingers crossed that the rain would hold off till the conclusion of our race. We first gridded up and waited for the flag to fall for our warm-up lap. I took it quite leisurely off the line and slowly doodled through the first set of turns. Quite a few guys passed me and they seemed to be going fairly fast for a warm-up lap. All of a sudden I thought to myself, “are you sure this is the warm-up lap?”
I was right, it was the warm-up lap and we all found our grid positions ready for the 6 lap race. Before long the lights went green and we were all off. I didn’t get the greatest of starts but I approximately held my grid position. Going down through the first three corners was very chaotic and then just to make it even more enjoyable I see some spits of rain on my front screen. I was a bit hesitant from this sight but kept the pace up with the rest of the field knowing that they were just a few drops and would have to be a bit more before the track conditions changed at all.
Coming through the first corner on the second lap I was approaching turn 2 and 3 and could see the heavens had opened. This was the last thing I wanted. Having a tinted visor on I could not even distinguish between the wet and dry parts of the track so just took it very very gingerly for the remaining 5 laps. At one stage I looked back and couldn’t see anyone behind, I had seen some people crash out and thought that maybe I was coming last! On the last lap I even lapped someone taking it even more cautiously than me but I wasn’t concerned about position, all I wanted to do was get back to the pits in one piece.
So after some very cautious laps I crossed the line for the chequered flag and was very happy find that I finished up in 15th position. Out of the total field of 40 bikes only 22 finished the race. Also my standing lap of a 2.12 was my fastest of the race, which just shows how cautious I was after I saw the rain. It was a big error wearing a tinted visor and I will learn from that but I don’t think it effected my final placing in the end. I was about 15 seconds in front of and behind the people around me so was definitely out on my own that race. So the first day of competition had drawn to a close, it was a very cautious but solid start to the weekend, something to build on.
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