3rd round - Thruxton
14-17 April 2006

Thruxton is the fastest circuit in the country so one which most riders love to race at.
Unfortunately though nobody gets to practice there as it’s dominated by car racing 99% of the time – so this makes it a good levelling ground for everyone.

Craigs wrist injury from Donington was still giving him some serious pain and Thruxton isn’t the place to race around injured!
Dosed up on pain killers Craig tried his best to get a good setting throughout the 2 free practice sessions and finished off 10th fastest – 1sec off Adrian Coates sitting at the top.
Craigs wrist injury was becoming more of an issues than he even thought and came in looking like a ghost and physically drained!
Fortunately there was no practice or qualifying Saturday due to the local church putting a stop to it because of noise limits.

Sunday and it was back to business, but Craig was still struggling with the wrist and in first qualifying didn’t improve his time enough and dropped to 16th fastest. It was all becoming a bit of a nightmare and Craig knew this weekend would just have to be damage limitation.
Final qualifying he dug deep and lost 1sec off his previous time and moved him self up to 9th fastest and finishing off 10th on the grid for the race.
Race day warm up and Craig tried to settle down with a few consistent lap times and finished off 6th fastest and was confident for the race later in the day.

With as many painkillers as he could cram inside him Craig took to the track for the race, but didn’t get the best start and was swamped into the first corner after wheeling off the line.
It was a very tough race with Craig sitting just outside the top 10 but by mid way he started to tire and within a few laps dropped down the field. Fortunately riders were crashing out quicker than Craig was going backwards so it all stayed pretty equal and on the last few laps Craig pushed through the pain barrier and started to reel in the guys in front and heroically pulled himself up and past them to finish a well earned 9th

Injury permitting, we’re hoping the next round at Oulton Park will be back to winning ways – lets hope so!!