Round 1 - Brands Hatch (05/04/10)

Spring time is here and that means one thing - fumes, and lots of them. The BSB travelling village descended upon Brands and it was great to catch up with everyone again after 5 months of relative kindness to the environment.

What wasn’t so great was pulling out of pit lane for the first dry practice and the engine dying around Paddock Hill bend. Little did I realise that not making it past Druids was to be a familiar feeling by the end of the weekend. Listening to other 2-strokes whizzing around the track whilst I pushed the bike back to the paddock wasn’t the start to the weekend that I’d hoped for and having missed the only dry practice session I felt on the back foot come qualifying. The new surface felt greasy and having lost my handy pot-hole and paint smudges as reference points I was struggling to get my line into Clearways and ended up in 20th place on the grid.

Still, with thoughts of last year’s run from 21st on the grid to finish in the top ten I thought I might still be in with an outside chance so come the race I engaged win-it-or-bin-it mode and hoped for the best. I made a great start and made up 4 or 5 places around Paddock, sneaking an inside line around Druids and sadly that was where the binning-it part came in! A highside on cold tyres exiting Druids spat me off into the pack and that was the end  of that!