We headed up to the circuit on Saturday afternoon, and watched some BSB racing on the Quest freeview channel, before getting the usual scrutineering and signon tasks out of the way. We then headed out for a track walk with Stephen Degnan and Nigel Race. Hopefully Dave Snr was listening carefully as he will be taking part in his first-ever track day at Darley Moor on Monday 19th July as part of the "Peter Hood 'Lofty' Track Day" - we'll let you know how he gets on!
All races in this meeting were scheduled as 10-laps. Our first race of the day was the Allcomers Cup. We drew a 15th grid position "out of the hat" and as soon as we headed onto track some 'mental rain' landed on our visors and screens. We got a great start, entering the Wilsons chicane in 4th position, and by the end of the opening lap we managed to move up to the lead. On lap 2 we were passed by both Chris Moore and Jim Hodson. We kept on going at our pace and then on lap 5 the rain shower got a little heavier - as we couldn't catch the leaders and had a large gap behind, we just managed the race to finish in a comfortable 3rd position.
Knowing that we couldn't attack from the off, we made a plan to spend several laps warming the tyres and then to ride as hard as possible to capture as many championship points as possible. We felt lucky that today's races were 10 laps!
At the end of the warm-up lap, the ever-quick Jim Hodson was forced to pull out of the race with a mechanical issue and didn't take the start. When the lights went out we cautiously pulled away and entered the chicane in 4th position - carrying as little speed as possible in order to not crash on our cold tyres. We continued to ride steadily and dropped to 5th place by the end of the lap. Each lap we got a little quicker but by the end of lap 3 we had already dropped to 6.14 seconds behind the leader, so decided to chance upping the pace. By the end of lap 5, we had moved up to 2nd place and were less than 4 seconds behind leader Richard Hunt. We managed to bridge the gap and took the lead on lap 7. At the chequered flag we took the win, with Richard Hunt taking 2nd position and Anthony Thane taking the final podium spot.
A special mention goes out to 5th-place finisher Matthew Birks who had a brush with the barrier at Townleys (circa 3:02 on the onboard video) and managed to keep upright across the grass and rejoin at the middle of the hairpin!
We then rode hard to close the gap to the leader and at the end of lap 8 the Top 3 in the race were covered by just 0.90 of a second. But at Park corner on lap 9 we got caught up with a backmarker (circa 8:22 on the onboard video) which broke the tow and we unfortunately lost touch with the leading group. Albert Walker took the race win, with Ben Handley taking 2nd place, and we took the final podium spot! Although we were disappointed that we couldn't keep the fight going until the chequered flag, we were happy with our overall performance.
FORMULA 600 CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS (TOP 10)
Albert Walker 39
Tom Fisher 30
David Carson 23
David Glossop 14
Ben Handley 12
Richard Wardle 10
Jordan Bannon 10
Richard Baker 8
Liam Weston 8
Tim Walsh 6
TWINS CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS (TOP 10)
David Carson 37
Jim Hodson 30
Anthony Thane 18
Richard Hunt 18
Sean Seddon 12
James Barnett 10
Andrew Herd 8
Kieran Jackson 8
Martin Kelly 7
Steven Pritchard 6