Round 8/9 Mallory Park

This is a big weekend, rounds 8 and 9 with plenty of points to be won and lost. After Knockhill I had regained a bit of confidence and felt ready for the races ahead.

I knew that qualifying was very important for a few reasons,firstly the time set would determin both race starts and secondly, the first corner is crazy from the start and its very easy to get blocked in and lose valuable time. Mallory is track I know well - its relatively easy to go fast here - but very hard to get the extra few tenths that count - Mallory is a very short track and every tenth can make the differerence.

I was awaiting some new fork kits to come through and they had not arrived before 1st qualifying - so I was out with a similar set up to that which I had run all year - not a bad thing but it could be better. I was happy with the session ending in 8th place and hope on the horizon as my new fork kits had arrived.

We put the kits in between session and went out in 2nd qualifying with an unknown set up - we knew we could return to the original settings if need be. Straight away the forks were better - and we made adjustments through the session and at 1 point I was running in pole, fantastic. Unfortunatly someone had put in an official complaint about the new fork kits......... the rules state that internals can be changed but not the outside, the adjusters for the new internals pertrudes for adjustment with a astheticaly different adjuster - as many of the other kits used by other riders do - but it seems it was not to be and I had to change back to the old settings.

At the start of the 1st race I was fired up and ready to go, we had made some tweeks to try and improve the original set up. The race started ok but the new tweeks had not really worked according to plan, the bike was tipping in to fast and I was struggling with front end grip - which is especially important at Mallory. I was running in the points but knew there was more to come. A few riders in front got tangled and I was able to take 11th place and score some decent points. The pace of the race was awesome and to finsih 11th was a good result.

For race 2 I knew I would have a set up that would work and I was looking forward to the start. This race went much better, I was just trailing the lead pack and was having a good 3 way tussle for 10th place, I was really enjoying the race and riding well and took 10th place. An excellent result again.

I left Mallory in 14th position in the championship.