Castle Coombe Grand National 30/31st July 05

Last years Grand National at Castle Comb turned out to be a painful one after crashing during wet qualifying breaking my wrist for the second time. Still raced next day before making a hasty retreat to hospital for more tender loving care!

This year’s event was again held over two days with one hour’s free practice, two half hour qualifier sessions and two 15 lap races on Sunday.

The circuit doesn’t get any smoother but is the same for everybody, trying to find a compromise setting during free practice to keep my Fireblade stable over the sixth gear bumps and undulations and still nimble through the tight chicanes is the key to good tyre wear and good race pace.

Free practice was dry and ended up in second place, wasn’t happy with my set-up but confident we could make it better through qualifying.

As the guys wheeled my bike out of the awning for the first qualifying session the heavens opened making it too slippery to get a good lap in early and as the half hour session moved on it was going to stay very wet so I opted to miss the session and wait see if session two would dry out?

Second session was still wet but so rain tyres were fitted and I did a few laps to get comfortable. The Honda is very user friendly in these conditions and fills you full of confidence. Towards the end of the session the track was drying in places and the rear wet was starting to overheat so I pitted for a new tyre. Only slicks were fitted to the other rims so I returned to the circuit and tried my hardest getting caught out by back markers on all but one lap ending up sixth on the grid.

Fortunately we had a dry 25 minute warm-up on race-day giving me more time to get happy on slicks; my technicians (that usually work for the injured Rutter) did a mega job in the short time making me much happier and confident before the races.

Race one was damp and my start was awesome only the pole-setter Johnny Rea made a Bonsai out-braking manoeuvre up the inside of me into the first hair-pin losing us both three places. Got my head down pushing through to third place when the red-flags came out for a crash that left too much debris laid across the circuit. At the same time somebody was losing oil from their bike and rode for a full lap leaving the circuit in need of a major cleaning.

They declared the result even though it was short and lengthened the second race to 20 laps.

Race two was red-flagged again on lap one after Johnny Rea took out Tommy hill and himself, both made the re-start but Rea from pit-lane!

My start wasn’t so good and I felt a bang as I left the start/line. Seventh on lap one and it sounded like the chain was jumping the sprocket, I looked down on the start/finish straight but everything looked ok so I got my head down. This race was dry and I really fancied my chances especially with it being 20 laps.

Made my way through the field to fifth then passed Tommy Hill and Alex Buckingham on the Rizla Suzuki before attacking Karl Harris. Passed Harris but the chain was still jumping the sprocket and he was straight back at me, he was over excited though and out braked himself at the last chicane disappearing across the grass.

That just left Haydon to deal with, passed him within a lap and was comfortable for the win but the sprocket gave up the ghost and left me cruising back to the paddock with three laps to go….. it’s just not meant to happen sometimes!!