Round 4 - Oulton Park British Superstocks

After the dissapointment of Snetterton - scoring no points and having some minor surgery to attend to on the bike - I was keen to make amends at Oulton.

In warm up which is very important to eak out any handling problems I was eager to get some good track time and get back into the swing if things. Unfortunatly on only the first few laps my oil light was flashing (we think sue to the crash at Snetterton) and I had to come in to prevent any damage to my engine. A big thanks to my mechanic who expertly swaped engines and prepared the bike for qualifying, cheers mate.

In first qualifying I was trying to catch up lost time, and felt it was going ok. I was faster than I had been before but again the pace was blistering and even the slightest mistake would cost places on the grid. I was not 100% happy with my set up and ended 19th. In 2nd qualifying I had made some small adjustments and felt I could up the pace to get where I deserved to be, unfortuntly, shortly into the session I started having problems with my front brake and slipped further down to 21st in my group, I tried to ride around the problem but after 9 laps I gave up and came in to see if we could cure the problem.

This gave me an overall position of 22nd on the grid. On a thin circuit like Oulton this was very demoralising as it is hard to pass and make up time. Although in the back of my mind was a Super club race I had done last year at Oulton where a terrible quaifying had turned into an excellent race result.

The race started well and I was picking off places desperate to get some points from the weekend and pushing hard, again shortly into the race my brakes started to fade, the alterations we had made obviously hadn't worked. I had no choice but to stay out and see if I could get a finish. I was braking hard into a slow corner on the track when my brake leaver came right back to the handle bar and hardly slowed me at all - I went straight on and after only 8 laps my race was over.

A bad weekend - but thats racing and it onwards and upwards to the next round. I am lying 12 in the championship.