Darley Moor - Round 1 Race Review (2015)

On a surprisingly pleasant Friday in March, we left Northwich and headed towards Darley Moor for the first weekend of racing in our 2015 season. The weather forecast advised of dry weather all weekend, but being March it was still quite cold so half of the radiator on our Kawasaki ER650 Supertwin needed to be taped up to prevent the engine running too cool.

With Saturday being a untimed practice/test day, we made plans for each of the six sessions to help us get up to speed. The plan was to get some initial track time on scrubbed tyres, then to fit some new tyres and finally to fit some new brake pads and ensure that everything was bedded in properly in time for the Sunday qualifying sessions - but things didn't exactly go to plan...

In the first session of the day, a bike which was in the process of blowing up came passed and covered the bike (and rider) in oil, including the front tyre. Not wanting to take any chances, we decided to have the new tyres fitted early which meant that we would miss a practice session :-(

With the new tyres fitted, we ventured out on track and spent a few laps scrubbing in the tyres before blowing away a few more cobwebs. Everything was going well and we reduced our lap time to a 1'05.39 (our personal best lap time was 1'02.42), so things were looking well :-)

After the lunch session, we got faster and reduced our lap time down to 1'04.70. But on return to the paddock we discovered that the front fairing mount had broken.

The remainder of the day was spent manufacturing a temporary repair so that we could make it to the grid on Sunday. Thanks must go out here to Tim Poole for the provision of the aluminium strips used in the repair and for the use of the vice in the back of his van!

Sunday Race Day

With Sunday race day upon us, we had fitted new brake pads overnight that would need to be bedded in during the first few laps of qualifying. The first qualifying session was for the Formula Darley class. It proved difficult to get a clean lap in but we managed to qualify 3rd in class (and 3rd on the combined grid) with a lap in the 1'07 bracket. In the following Mini Sound Of Thunder qualifying session we managed a much cleaner run and again qualified 3rd in class (6th on grid) with a 1'03.54 lap time.

In the first race of the season - the Mini Sound Of Thunder Race 1 - we got a good start and entered the first corner second place in class. We had a good race with Jamie Hodson for 2nd place but eventually finished 3rd, just 0.09 behind Jamie. The good news was that we set a new personal best lap time of 1'02.24 during the race. The final laps are shown in the video below.

The second race of the day - Formula Darley Race 1 - provided another good start for us and another race with Jamie Hodson. This battle continued until lap 6 (of 8) when we got stuck behind a backmarker, cementing another 3rd place finish for us. More good news was that we set a "new" new personal best lap time of 1'02.18 during the race.

Mini Sound Of Thunder Race 2 provided our first poor start of the season. We worked our way through the pack and managed to catch 3rd-placed Josh Dransfield, but getting caught behind a backmarker at the start of lap 7 (of 8) meant that we were unable to challenge any further and had to settle for a 4th place finish. The video below shows our race until we met the backmarker.

Our final race of the day was Formula Darley Race 2. We managed an OK start this time and worked our way into 4th place by the second corner, before chasing and overtaking Josh Dransfield to take 3rd place on lap five. We kept the position by a narrow margin of 0.3 seconds at the line.

Close racing at times!!

At the end of day's racing, we are currently standing 3rd position in both championships. This is a positive position but with seven more race meetings left in the Darley Moor championships there is plenty more racing left yet! We also got a mention in the BikesportNews Race Report, which was nice.

Our next race meeting is Darley Moor Round 2 on Sunday 12th April.