Darley Moor - Round 6 Race Review (2015)

Glorious sunshine welcomed our arrival to Darley Moor Round 6. With the usual crew not arriving until Sunday morning, David Jnr was tasked with setting up on the Saturday evening (albeit with some help from Tim Poole and Ket to get the awning up). We had already fitted wet tyres to our Kawasaki ER650 Supertwin as Sunday's weather forecast was looking pretty horrid.

Sunday morning arrived without the promised rain but the forecast still said that rain would be arriving, so we put the spare wheels on warmers and made the decision to change to dry tyres as late as possible.

The Formula Darley qualifying was dry. After rebuilding the front brakes we needed to spend a few laps bedding in brake pads before getting some faster laps in. We qualified in 2nd position, 0.44 of a second off pole.

The rain starting to fall...

For the Mini Sound of Thunder qualifying, the sky got dark and spot of rain began to appear. With a dark visor on it was difficult to gauge the track conditions but we took a few chances and managed to qualify in 2nd position again.

By the time we had got back to the paddock, the rain had stopped, so we decided to leave the dry tyres on for our first race which followed only 15 minutes afterwards.

Heading into Formula Darley Race 1 the light rain appeared again. A good start got us into 2nd position into the first chicane, behind Michael Brookes and just ahead of Brad Vicars. Coming into the hairpin on the first lap, Brad came passed to take second position and then a close encounter between Brad and Michael on the exit of the hairpin elevated Brad into the lead, myself into 2nd position and Michael into 3rd position. With the rain getting heavier throughout the race, the positions then stayed as they were, with us crossing the finishing line in 2nd place.

With the weather conditions now firmly established as being wet, the organisers declared all subsequent races as wet races. A quick change to wet tyres and we were ready for the rest of the days races.

It had been a while since we had experienced a properly wet race, so in Mini Sound Of Thunder Race 1, it took us a while to get into conditions. By the time we got into the swing of things and moved up into 2nd position, we were 12 seconds down on the leader. Feeling comfortable, we pushed further and reduced our lap times further and closed the gap over the next five laps to be only 4 seconds at the flag. We had ran out of laps but we got another 2nd place finish and the fastest lap of race.

Formula Darley Race 2 was a race with lots of backmarkers which made life interesting. Unlike the previous race, there was a feeling that we had to try and push this time, rather than the lap times just coming to us. By pushing, we made lots of little mistakes and were struggling to keep up with Michael Brookes in 2nd position, until on the last lap Michael's throttle cable snapped, which promoted us back into 2nd place which we kept until the flag.

The last race of the day was Mini Sound Of Thunder Race 2. By now the conditions were pretty grim but we lapped quicker than in Formula Darley Race 2. Even so, we couldn't hold onto leader Brad Vicars who took the final race win, with us again finishing in 2nd place.

With a solid brace of 2nd place finishes throughout the day, we are now standing in 2nd position in both the Formula Darley and Mini Sound of Thunder championships:

MINI SOUND OF THUNDER
Brad Vicars    69
David Carson 64
Stuart Hall     38

FORMULA DARLEY
Brad Vicars    72
David Carson 60
Stuart Hall     37

As a nice bonus, we even get a few mentions in the official BikeSport News Race Review.

And with someone braving the rain to take some videos of the meeting, there are a few flashes of us in this trackside video too  :-)

There is a bit of a long summer break now, with our next race meeting (Darley Moor Round 7) not taking place until Sunday 20th September. We'll keep you posted with any interesting happenings in the meantime!