Darley Moor Rounds 3 & 4 - Race Review (2025)

The recent good weather continued to bless us at Darley Moor and delivered a weekend of beautiful sunshine! And even though we didn't take home any trophies from this meeting, we did walk away with some sunburn...

Having decided that 159 laps had used the best of our tyres, we decided to treat the Aprilia to some new rubber (as well as front brake pads) for this meeting. We decided to run a simplified setup this weekend, with only one machine and no awning - making the set-up (and clear-down) a much more enjoyable affair.

As simple as we can get!

​After the usual scrutineering/sign-on activities were complete, we completed a lap of the circuit (with the girls on rollerblades) before watching some MotoGP sprint race and NW200 action. In case you were wondering, Dave Snr was unable to attend this meeting due to being on a Caribbean cruise.

First lap of the weekend!

1st and 2nd born daughters taking their places

Out into our single qualifying session on the Sunday morning, we decided to take it easy for the opening laps to bed in the tyres and pads. After a couple of laps we decided to go quicker but then the red flag was shown. After sitting there for around six minutes the session was restarted, so we took a couple of laps to make sure everything was up to temperature before pushing on. We did an initial lap of 1'04.12 and then the chequered flag was out... So we ended up qualifying 7th on the Darley Cup grid and 6th in the Supertwin class (9th on the combined grid), which wasn't a great result.

With a big time gap until our races we took the opportunity to buy some ice-cream and watch some of the racing.

Vanilla Ice Cream Baby... :-)

Round 3
Our first race of the day was the Darley Cup. A decent start saw us enter the Wilsons chicane in 5th position, just behind Nick Clare. Whilst we were trying to get passed Nick, Jonathan Trezins popped passed us at the hairpin on lap 2 to demote us to 6th position. Nick ran wide at the hairpin on lap 4 which allowed us to move back up to 5th position, where we started to chase down Jonathan. Then on lap 7 Jonathan ran across the Wilsons chicane which allowed us to move into 4th position. From there we set our best lap of the race (1'01.31) and crossed the line in 4th position.

With just a one-race-gap between the Darley Cup and Supertwin races, the "one-man support team" (aka Dave Jnr) hurriedly popped on the tyre warmers, refuelled the bike, cleaned the barrage of bugs from the helmet visor and screen, then drank as much water as possible before being called up for the Supertwin race.

A super-quick change of the light caught out a number of riders, including ourselves. We entered the Wilsons chicane in 9th position (our grid position) and moved up to 8th position by the end of the opening lap. From there we caught and passed one person per lap for the next four laps, setting a best lap of 1'01.25 along the way. On the final lap we made our way onto the back of Stephen Taylor and momentarily passed him before he let off the brakes and swept across the front of our bike (leaving a small gap of ~8 inches). We composed ourselves, fumbled through the corner and crossed the finish line just 0.23 of a second behind Stephen. When we returned back to the paddock we discovered that we had been battling for 3rd place on the final corner! If we would have known then we might have tried to attack a but more, but so be it - we had secured another 4th placed finish, and captured some decent onboard footage...  ;-)

Photo by Ian Kinnear

A lunchtime trip inside the refurbished Chequered Flag Cafe showed that we now feature within some of their framed photos  :-)

Round 4
After another big gap in proceeding we started the second round of races, with the Darley Cup race up first. A poor start saw us enter the Wilsons chicane in 6th position, just behind  Jonathan Trezins. We followed Jonathan for the majority of the race until - on lap 7 in an almost identical repeat of the opening race - he ran across the Wilsons chicane which allowed us to move up to 5th position. On the last lap we managed to set our best lap time of 1:01.62, as we crossed the line in 5th position.

Photo by Graham Mallen

​After another quick turnaround by the "one-man support team" it was time for the final race of the day, the Supertwin race. A poor start saw us enter the Wilsons chicane in 10th position. We were moving forward at a rate of one-position-per-lap when the red flag was shown due to a faller at Townleys. The first part of the race is shown below.

After a short wait the race restarted. Another poor start saw us enter the chicane in 8th position. Our poor starts even evoked a response from the commentator... "David doesn't like starting fast, but he makes up for it as the race goes on". And that's what happened again, with us chasing down and passing people ahead - even making a last corner, last lap overtake to finish the race in 5th position.

Our fastest lap of 1:01.38 made us the fifth-fastest person on track, so we ended up where we should have at least! The forecasted lap time on the final lap (before we approached our competitor) showed that we could have even been back into the 1'00-bracket, which is promising too.

Photo by Ian Kinnear

This meeting has reinforced my understanding that since announcing our "retirement from championship competition" - or "semi-retirement" or whatever else it should be called - that we have 'lost' something and at the moment I'm not sure whether it will return or not. As mentioned earlier, there are no trophies from this meeting (albeit we did get close) but we did get a new HelloDave Racing hoodie (thanks Dave!), some almighty sunburn - and had great fun from a 'social event' and 'family day out' perspective!

Our next time out on track will be Darley Moor Rounds 5 & 6 on Sunday 15th June (which is Father's Day). With Dave Snr back in the country, we may even try to make a return with both machines...