BSB Round 9 Silverstone

After my week in the Greek sunshine Silverstone’s forecast sounded like it was about to punish me. Same for everybody I know but hardly makes you want to get up in the morning when all you can hear is rain bouncing on the motorhome roof!

Friday’s first free-practice was very wet, not that I really minded as haven’t ridden the Honda much in those conditions so I went out to get a feel for things.

Second session was still damp in places but mainly dry, Silverstone is a hard circuit to read in those conditions tough with it being so flat or off camber.

Ended the session in 6 th position but nobody was sticking their necks out!

Had a few issues in qualifying getting the gearing sorted with the conditions being nice & dry but settled in nicely trying to get plenty of laps on a race tyre.

With ten minutes to go put a qualifier in & went eighth quickest, then fitted my second Q with five minutes remaining but was held up on both my fast laps. Couldn’t believe it when my pit-board read P21.

Second session managed to lap much faster but still struggled to do consistent laps on qualifiers, my ideal time put me in the top ten but that was from my best three splits… not a best lap.

Fifth row of the grid in nineteenth place, mortified to say the least. My race pace was good but had a lot of work to do on the opening laps. No real complaints with the Honda, only had me to blame!

Race one was red-flagged after a couple of crashes, main one had left oil on the exit of turn-one causing Laverty, Harris & Bostrom to crash heavily, also Emmett had taken Smart out breaking his collarbone!

In the re-start I was caught up in some fairing bashing at Becket’s on lap one leaving me down the field. Worked my way up to eleventh place & had caught Haydon & Tommy Hill but Ben Wilson managed to crash in side of me.

I managed to stay on but had to run across the grass & lost a place to Johnny Rea, managed to re-pass him but not enough time to catch Haydon & Hill again settling for eleventh.

Race Two was red-flagged again after I’d managed a mega start with a couple more crashes on lap one.

My re-start was terrible but made up many places on the first few laps before catching Emmett & Hill on the Virgin Yamaha’s.

Emmett ran wide going into Abbey Hairpin so I passed him on the inside, for some stupid reason he ran straight into the back of my left leg pushing me to the ground, another DNF!

We made good progress over the weekend even though the results didn’t show it, two crashes didn’t help but neither were my fault. First one on oil taking Harris, Buckingham & myself before the red-flags came out, then the second crash caused by Emmett!

Next stop Cadwell… Am I looking forward to that one!