Round 12 - Oulton Park (11/10/09)

It doesn't seem long ago that we were rolling up at Brands Hatch, bright-eyed and full of anticipation for a good season so it seemed strange turning up at a leaf-strewn Oulton Park for the final round of the championship already.  With an over-subscribed 125 grid this event looked like it was going to be another corker and the sheer number of entrants to be shoe-horned into the paddock meant that by the time we turned up there was no room left in the 125 area so we were re-directed to set up at the back of parc ferme which as we later discovered set us up for a tough weekend…

Friday's performance looked promising and I relaxed into a comfortable pace ending up 9th and 12th in the two sessions. I knew there was more to come and was looking forward to beating my 1m49.6 best lap from last year. First qualifying on Saturday morning was wet but with a dry Q2 forecast everyone knew it didn't really count for anything. So we just aimed to prep some suspension settings in case of a wet race and most importantly not fall off before the final session! I was pleasantly surprised to finish 14th after a safe ride. Qualifying 2 however turned out to be a bit of a disaster. The BSB race before our session was red flagged until Graham Gowland's bike was retrieved from the lake (good effort!). Unfortunately the officials had forgotten we were tucked away out of the main 125 area so having not heard of any changes to the schedule we kept an eye on the BSB podium proceedings. Previous experience dictated that pit lane wouldn't be opened before the winner's champagne was sprayed so with that as our marker I set off for the holding area in what I thought was good time… only to see the 125's were already completing their first lap! I joined the track at the back of the freight train and after scrubbing in my new Dunlops I was struggling to get a clear lap. I pulled into pit lane to pick a gap but caught more traffic on the way out. After a couple of laps with no joy I pulled in for a suspension setting change but just as I'd fed through to pit lane the trackside marshal held out a 2 minutes to go board! (It appears we also missed out on being told our session had been shortened!) Needless to say I didn't bother stopping and after a frustrating amble through pit lane sticking to the speed limit I tried to get around to the start line again to register a flying lap but it wasn't to be. I was gutted to have missed it by only a few seconds and ended up 25th place on the grid. Being told that my practice time from the day before would've put me in 12th place didn't really help either! Our hopes of making the points were realistically all but gone so I limbered up my elbows for a fun race trying to move through the pack!

The race day morning rain cleared for a dry track. Well, right up until our session that is! I'd wanted to try out a suspension setting but ended up teetering around in the wet for a couple of laps trying to keep the slicks rubber side down. With a wasted warm up and a similarly unsuccessful qualifying session we wondered what else could go wrong but it turned out that the grand finale was yet to come. Indeed I'd saved the masterpiece of all screw ups for the race itself… trying to pull away from the lights with the bike stuck in neutral! Fortunately no one hit me from behind on the start and I managed to peel into the first corner in 41st place! By this point I was powered by the thought of a whole winter of mickey taking - a very effective motivator! By the end of the first lap I'd made it up to 27th place and continued to move through the pack every lap. With a few laps to go I'd cleared the traffic but the next person in front was out of sight so I eased the pace to bring it home safely. On the final lap I saw Taylor McKenzie rejoining the track after he'd had a fantastic race at the front and then taken a minor detour at Lodge so I just managed to sneak 12th from him at the flag by just 0.008 seconds!

It's been a great year with 9 points finishes out of 11 races, bettering my highest race finish of last year with an 8th place at Oulton Park in May and finishing up 14th in the championship overall from 50+ competitors over the year so I'd like to say a huge thanks to everyone who's supported us this season. We're already looking forward to 2010!