North West 200: I left Brands after the race to make the 500 mile journey to the NW200 – what great event
I left Brands after the race to make the 500 mile journey to the NW200. When we finally did make it we were met with great weather. Not having rode there for a couple of years I managed to do a few laps in the car but as you can imagine its not much help. The team had bought a world superbike engine off of Paul Bird so I couldnt wait to get out and see how it felt flat out in top gear on a ‘B’ road!
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Tuesday evening saw the first practise and I went out on my superbike first and ended up 25th with a best lap of 4.47.435 which I was happy enough with. The next session I went out on the Zig Zag superstock which felt very strange as I had not ridden a stock bike for 4 years and it took some getting used to but I did the same lap time as my superbike.
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Next it was qualifying on Thursday evening which I made alot of changes to the superstock bike to suit my riding style. As like the practise I went out on my superbike again and got down to a 4min38sec on lap 3 before some idiot broke way too late and kindly smashed into me taking me off at Yorke hairpin. I ran the 1.5k distance along the golf course back to paddock wearing my full race suit and boots but we did not manage to get the spare bike out in time. So with only 3 laps done I qualified 20th which wasnt to bad as the leaders had 12 laps. In the next session I went out on the Zig Zag bike. The changes I made had felt alot better but still not comfortable I ended up 22nd.
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Race day was on saturday and my first race was the superbike class. With an average start I found myself behind some slower riders who were holding me up so when I managed to get past I could not catch 10th place and finished 11th which I was really happy with. My next race was superstock’s and having a good start I found myself battling for 14th place but on lap 3 of 5 the steering damper broke and had to ride with no damper which was terrible and got so bad I had to cruise the last lap and ended 17th. The second superbike race saw me have bit of a bad start and in turn 1 I went back about 5 places. I muscled my way through to 14th place where I had a race long battle with James McBride. I used his slip stream on lap 4 to get 205mph down the long straight which felt awsome! James ended up beating me and I came home with 15th. I also did a lap time of 4min29sec which was good.
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It was really good week and cant wait for next year and also Donington this weekend.
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PTJ #40
