Here are some photos from the fifth Darley Moor meeting of 2017, taken by official Darley photographer Tony Else...

The first photo is an especially rare shot - hard on the brakes coming out of Park corner (to avoid a fallen bike and rider)

This weekend hosted Round 5 (of 7) of the Darley Moor club championships. In the week leading up to the race weekend, we had some very sad news from the Ulster Grand Prix that Darley-regular Jamie Hodson was involved in a crash and succumbed to his injuries.

Jamie was a multiple Darley Moor club champion and through the years advanced to achieve great things, including being crowned the winner of the 2016 Manx Grand Prix Supertwin race. Over the years Jamie has run several different race numbers, more often than not choosing to run #20 - except for a brief but memorable period in 2011 where he ran the #1 plate (as the reigning 125GP champion) but returned to his trusty #20 after only a few meetings, advising us that the #1 plate just brought him bad luck!

This season at Darley Moor saw Jamie making a change and electing to run #50 on his race machines. Michael Wright took the initiative to print out a stack of stickers to help riders show their respects at the meeting. As it turned out, his stack of stickers was nowhere near big enough and he very quickly ran out!

Jamie's passing came as a great shock to us all and the Two Daves Racing team would like to express our deepest sympathies to all of Jamie's family, friends and supporters.

​Prior to the race meeting, some further changes/enhancements were made to our Kawasaki ER650 Supertwin. The exhaust, following the issues experienced earlier in the season, was treated to a new (or rather reinstated) additional rear support/mounting point - along with us doing the usual routine preparations and maintenance - in order to reduce the chance of exhaust failure again this season.

For the first time in our lengthy racing career (now spanning over 22 years!) we did not receive an entry in the mail. The race office were very accommodating and arranged for some passes to be left on the gate for us. Once into the paddock and setup, we were delivered a gift in the form of a repaired exhaust can from Mike Gittings and Stuart Hall - cheers to those guys for arranging the repair and for hand-delivering it back to us!  :-)

When ​Sunday morning arrived it was typical fantastic Darley weather! We headed out into the qualifying session and after four or five laps the session was stopped due to Jack Petrie crashing at Townleys. It was a big crash with rider, motorbike and race circuit all injured by the fall. We wish Jack all the best and hope he recovers soon!

The qualifying session was restarted and only lasted three laps before another crash at Townleys involving Barry Brearley brought out the red flags again. We also wish Barry all the best and hope he recovers soon! The qualifying session was officially stopped at that point - we took pole position with a lap time of 1'03.02!

Starting the opening Formula Darley race from pole position we immediately got down into good times, putting in some 1'02s and then a series of three 1'01 laps at the end of the six-lap race. By the chequered flag, we were 2 seconds behind Ross Richards on his Spondon-framed ER6 which was having a test run prior to the Manx Grand Prix next week. With Ross' machine not eligible for the Formula Darley class, we took the win from Joe Walton in second place, with Jason Wilkes coming home in third place. 

Despite concerns that we were entering the race without testing the new clutch, everything felt fine as the 6-lap race began. We once again got down to good lap times and managed to set a new Personal Best lap time of 1'01.22 (with three of the six laps being quicker than our previous PB lap of 1'01.49!). Ross Richards was the race winner, three seconds ahead of our second place finish, with Joe Walton taking third place a couple of seconds behind us. As a slight consolation we did manage to set the fastest lap of the race!

The third race of the day, Formula Darley race 2, took two attempts to complete. The race was started and then red flagged on lap 4 following Joe Walton's spectacular crash out of the lead (see from 3:30 in the video below). We narrowly avoided Joe and rode in-between the fallen bike and fallen rider during the incident.

At the restart, we rode quite conservatively as the spare clutch was also beginning to show signs of slipping. We did only what we needed to and took the win from Jason Wilkes in second place, with Wayne Bridges taking the final podium position.

Before the final race, we received a visit from a couple of small supporters who were wearing helmets very appropriate to Two Daves Racing! But the best thing was that one of the supporters is actually named "Carson"  :-)

The final race was supposed to be damage-limitation, in order to reduce the impact on the clutch. But when the race began normal service was resumed and we just tried to go as fast as we could. Despite being involved in some battles with the larger Sound of Thunder machines we managed to put a couple of 1'01 laps in.

​Part way through the race, Ian Robinson (in the Sound of Thunder class) very kindly let us through to have some clear runs at the chicanes - which was nice as he didn't have to do that. From then on the clutch started to provide feedback that it was unhappy by continuing to slip - the video below shows a good example around 6:35.

Ross Richards took the win, we finished in second place and after his crash in the race before Joe Walton took a well-deserved third place (with what was later identified as a broken scaphoid and thumb).

At the end of another meeting we walk away with a couple of trophies, another handful of points, a new personal best lap and a (mostly) working bike. Overall, this was a very good race meeting for us.

With two rounds of the 2017 championship remaining, the current championship positions are as follows:
​
​FORMULA DARLEY - TOP 5
David Carson    70
Chris Moore      38
Joe Walton       28
Jamie Hodson   18
Jack Petrie        16

MINI SOUND OF THUNDER - TOP 5
David Carson    61
Joe Walton       41
Jack Petrie        22
Stuart Hall        18
Jamie Hodson   18

Our next event will be Darley Moor Round 6 on Sunday 17th September.