Castle Combe - 28 and 29 July 2007 -
I often talk about racing as being an emotional thing. It's hard to really quantify it because it is different for all of us and is more subtle than just being happy or sad. But once again we had an emotional weekend, this time at Castle Combe.
This is an annual event which in the past has been graced by some of the BSB Superbike teams although sadly they were not present this year. Having said that, there were one or two regular BSB riders and the very best from the Club scene present to try and take Victor's title from him. Last year Victor won the Fowlers Superbike National Grand Prix title and was here to defend it, this time on the MV Agusta F4 312R of STP Racing. There are two races and the accumulated times decide the winner.
This was the first competitive outing for Vic since his Oulton crash, and his first ride since the loss of his very close friend Ollie Bridewell in an accident at Mallory Park a little over one week ago. It was going to be painful whatever the outcome.
Victor wasn't due to go out on track until 17:00, so we had plenty of time to get set up and everything sorted. It was really nice to see the STP Racing team mates turning up, Matt Whitman and girlfriend Katie popped in and Rod Lynn with Steve and Hayley also turned up. Warwick's excuse for missing the event was that he was taking part in the Suzuka 8 hour race in Japan this weekend (I know it's a feeble excuse, but he's not been with us long!!) and Chris Burns was in Spain having a rest.
We know Vic is quick at the track, his history here proves that, but we had never run the MV here before, and we didn't know the strength of the opposition either. What we also struggled with was that it wasn't raining. It's been so long since we had a bike on the track in the dry we were a bit bemused by it all. We think the last dry weekend could have been Thruxton back in April (this year). The Free Practice session went like a dream and Vic ended up quickest by a decent margin, over 1.3 seconds in fact. This puts a great deal of pressure on now because the expectations rise exponentially when things are going well.
We were next due out at track at 08:45 Sunday morning for qualifying, that's right, the same 08:45 that happens every day before we get up!
Things returned to normal overnight as it started to rain at about eight in the evening and was still chucking it down when we all crawled off to bed. The morning dawned dark and nasty, big horrid clouds, and no wind. There were big puddles everywhere and it looked like a typical race meeting for us. Then, it started to get unpredictable. The rain had stopped in the early hours, the cloud was now thinning and at about 08:00 hours the sun started to appear. Would we run dry tyres or wets? In the end we went for wets but with a dry rear in the warmer which we would throw in if we needed to.
As our class was the first out on track we were the explorers, and it was patchy and marginal for wet tyres. In the pit lane some of the riders started putting full slicks in and I must confess to getting concerned. Not to worry though, at the end of the damp session Vic was on Pole by three tenths. Let me just repeat that, an MV Agusta was on Pole for the race due to start at 13:20.
The first race looked like it was going to be in dry conditions and so the bike was returned to the dry settings from the Free Practice session of Saturday evening. With nothing else left to do we just became more and more anxious.
13:20 arrived and Vic went out to take his Pole position on the grid. After the warm up lap we were ready for the lights. Off they went and the MV lurched and pitched off the line straight back into about 12th place. By the end of the second lap Vic had gone up to 4th place and each lap after he picked up another place, taking the lead on the 6th lap. He and fellow BSB rider Nick Pusey on an R1 began to pull away together leaving the pack behind. This was pretty exciting stuff and we thought the win was ours. Stewy was the team boss for the day, and he was skulking around like an expectant father, pacing up and down with all the worries of the world on his shoulders. He looked good with it though!! On the last lap however Nick Pusey mugged Vic and we were relegated to 2nd place. Over the Line Victor trailed home three tenths down. What a disappointment after all the expectations from the free practice and qualifying sessions. Nothing must be taken for granted. After the podium celebrations it was back for a debrief.
Victor was not happy at all, his wrist was really sore after lap 8 and the bike set-up was miles away from what he wanted. The gearing was also wrong, in fact nothing was right and he was fairly depressed. Now if I had come second I would have been pretty damned happy. But as I have no ability I guess that would be acceptable. For Vic however coming second was a reason to consider throwing himself onto a sword. Steve Ellis the head engineer for the day calmly led the debrief, worked out what all the problems were and set about making the changes to the bike. Vic also wanted the clutch looked at but we didn't have time to deal with that. Steve felt that Victor would love or hate the new settings as they were quite radically different from the first race, it was a gamble in the search for the win, but something had to be done for the 15 lapper at 16:00. The other point about this was of course the additional 5 laps to do, Victor was finished after 10 laps with his wrist in real trouble, getting to the end of a 15 lap race was going to be tough.
Half an hour before we were due out, our race was called so it was a mad panic to get ready in time, and then we just had to sit on the start line for 10 minutes.
This time we started in the finishing order from the first race which meant second place on the grid. It might as well have been 4th row because Victor managed to get another wretched start and went backwards no doubt to other peoples delight. We were the biggest team there, and to get humiliated is what would have seemed like good sport to most people.
So Victor started the process of pulling back all the places he lost at the start which made for really good racing. Like in the last race he managed to get past everyone and took the lead on lap 6 and pulled a great margin of over 3 seconds in 4 laps. Guess what happened next? The Pace Car came out and his lead dropped to nothing over the next 3 laps while the debris was cleared up. Then we were told that there was to be an extra 2 laps added to the race duration, oh no, we had put fuel in for 15 laps and now it was to be an eighteen lap race. Plus of course no gap over the second placed Nick Pusey again. The only good thing about the Pace Car was it gave Vic time to relax his wrist before the sprint for the last 5 laps.
When the Pace Car pulled off the circuit Victor led the field round, with Pusey ominously close this time. In fact Victor couldn't shake him off at all and a repeat of the first race looked inevitable. For 4 laps the two of them circulated together with all of us thinking that Pusey would pass Victor to take the honours. Good job Victor wasn't thinking that though. On the last lap Victor did a block move where Pusey had come by in the first race and this did just enough to make Pusey back off enough. When they came back into site Victor was 10 bike lengths ahead as they went into the final chicane, eight bike lengths ahead as they came round the last corner, and .75 of a second ahead over the line. Victor had won the race, but more importantly also won the Fowlers Superbike Grand National as well, on the MV Agusta.
Naturally being reserved British people, we clapped politely and shook hands with all sorts of people. Well we did that but only after making more noise than a hovering Harrier jet, yes we were a bit pleased and relieved.
We know it wasn't a win at the top level with all the Championship contenders their, but it wasn't racing at the bottom of the food chain either, not by a long way. It was a rehabilitation ride for Victor and it was a confidence booster for the team who have worked so hard and been dogged by such bad luck this year.
For the team it was a great weekend, but for Victor it was a real time for growing up, reflection and evaluation. His career will continue and we hope it grows from strength to strength just as it should. For Victor's friend Ollie of course this won't happen. We saw a lot of Ollie at race weekends, he was always very approachable and happy to talk with anyone. He always had a big smile on his face and he just loved doing what he did and he was such a good natured young lad. Victor wanted to win this for Ollie and he did just that.
While this win was a great boost for the team, a really nice win for MV Agusta, and a personal triumph for Victor, we would like to dedicate this weekend to the memory of a lovely young lad, Ollie Bridewell.
Bob Cooley
Brands Hatch - 3, 4 and 5 August 2007 -
Talk about excited, here we are at Brands Hatch as a wildcard entry for the European Superstock 1000 race, a part of the World Superbike Championship.
Not since we were here in Kent during April this year had we seen so much sun, something we didn't expect after the wettest BSB season in history. In fact we had forgotten how to do a dry bike setup so we started with guesswork.
Also unlike BSB we seemed to get plenty of track time as well which is nice for the riders. Another thing we discovered is that the control Pirelli tyres are only 'hired' for the meeting, we don't get to keep them after the event. I don't know exactly why this is but assume it has something to do with their development cycle.
The regulations vary slightly from BSB regulations and we had to install some carbon parts over the clutch cover and also on the other side of the bike in addition to the normal crash bobbins that we use. We couldn't get a quickshifter either which was a disappointment.
So, on Friday 3rd August we set off for the first Free Practice session. We had to wake up the cockerels too as our first session was pre-dawn (well 09:00 which is early for racing). It was looking pretty good too with Victor inside the top 10 until we were flagged in by the Marshals on lap 5. The carbon plate on the clutch cover had vibrated loose causing an oil leak from the clutch housing. There was nothing we could do in pit lane so our first session was disappointingly short.
The first Qualifying session started at 15:30 in the afternoon with a splendid 25 degrees of sunshine. Now this was more like it, with the oil leak fixed Victor was like a scalded cat. In fact as the session went on he moved up and down the positions as riders got stuck into the task. Because the weather had been so unpredictable in the last few months we decided that this session should be considered our main dry session and all the stops were pulled out. With a new tyre ready for midway through the session at the ready, it was all systems go. At the end of a very tense 45 minutes Victor was in a very pleasing 15th position with a time of 1:31.691. More importantly he was the first Britain and first wildcard.
Roll on tomorrow (Saturday) as we can make some changes just to sharpen things up for the second qualifying session. Why is it that all year we have been begging for some dry weather, but now we wanted wet. And just like when we wanted dry and got wet, now we wanted wet it got hotter and sunnier than ever. As the session got underway it was clear that the changes we had made didn't work and poor Vic just went backwards. In fact at the end of the session he was half a second slower than in Qualifying 1 and dropped back to a disappointing 25th by the close. One crumb of good news however was that the new technique for practice starts seemed to work well. For those of you that get juddery race starts away from traffic lights or the jewellery store, do the opposite of what you think you should. No more than five thousand revs will see a smooth and rapid getaway without it either snapping your neck or dumping your pillion passenger as it jolts away.
The race itself was for Sunday morning at 10:30, the tension was palpable. I pretended to be a brolly dolly and slipped onto the start line with the rest of the team just to take photos and soak in the atmosphere. It was fantastic even at that time of day. Just to prove the start technique works Victor went from 25th to 20th on the first lap and we with all the reserve we could manage shouted at him as he went by on the next lap. And then it all started to unravel. A problem occurred that Victor has never had before, while the front brake worked really well, what spooked him is that the lever came right back to the handle bar. With his confidence taking a bit of a knock he slowly lost concentration and gradually slipped back to 25th over the remaining laps. It was disappointing to have come so far and yet still stumble at the final time of asking.
So at one minute past 11:00 in the morning our weekend was over as far as our racing goes. We did stay on with the bikes on display until after the second Superbike race. Congratulations of course must go to James Toseland for his first ever WSB double, and of course his first wins at Brands Hatch since he was about 14 years old.
With the weather due to turn nasty again soon we shall be back off to the BSB series over the next few weeks.
Bob
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