Brands hatch march 7-8

Friday 6th- the vans loaded and my dad and i are ready for the trip down to brands. Once were there we get the marquee set up and the van unloaded. then we decide to go for a wonder and it hits us just how unprepared we really are! we meet a really good bloke who races an fz750 in the thunderbikes called phil smith without his help i would have been in the gravel at paddock hill!

On the saturday we borrowed a pump off phil to sort out the tyre pressures(they were 10psi in both!) and i start getting myself ready after a night on the van floor! i head out for qualifying which was also my first time on the bike. luckily it goes thru the gears ok! phil leads me round for 2 laps to show me the lines then i realise i cant change gear! my shift rod fell out! an end to qualifying with a time of 1.08. 38th/38 on the grid woohoo!

with the bike back we sort all the little gremlins out and with my confidence at an all time low my dad asked ben from alto performance to have a quick look over my bike. the 3 things he told me to change were my old road tyres! to some race rubber, my pads and discs from road gear to race ones and adjust my suspension! as my budget was 0 we could only adjust the suspension but only for the 2nd race.

the 1st race i started last but was able to run around and keep upright making a couple of places before the end.34/38 with a best time of 1.00 so a bit of an improvement.

the 2nd race came along and we had sorted the suspension so i was feeling a little better in my self. i start were i finished the last race so 34th on the grid. the race gets under way and i lost 2 places as i slowly get used to the better feel of my bike. 3 laps out of 10 had gone by and i had made up 1 place. then out of nowhere in the next 2 laps i made up 5 places! i then have a 5 lap battle wit mark sclater on his svx550 supermoto. we swap places until the final lap when on the run out of clearways i beat him by 0.04 of a second! wow i got 29th! but what a racewith a time of 59.4!

that night i was awarded the first ever Bumpstop 'spirit of thunderbike uk' award for my efforts and circumstances over that day.

sunday starts and im on such a high from the previous evening i go out for my warm up and go quicker than ive bin before!

race 1 on sunday taught me the up and downs of racing as all i can remember is the start! ive been told that i highsided coming out of clearways the bike hit me on the head which broke my collar bone and the following bike hit me! you could say i came back to earth with a bang!

ive now had an operation to plate and screw my collar bone back to gether so should be fixed in time for cadwell! i have heard that mark sclater hit me and broke his arm in the process so my best wishes go out to him.

check back soon for more news and reports on my progress in the thunderbike uk series

My first race bike

my dad, my brother(jason) and i hired a van to go pick my first race bike up that we found on gumtree.co.uk for £350. We went all the way down to a small village close to andover to see my new fzr600! The bike came with loads of spares and a dyno reading of 92.4 bhp! pretty impressive for an 18 year old bike! She started up first time and sounded sweet as a nut, i was jumping for joy inside! (it had been a year since i had a motorcycle, i started to get withdrawal symptoms) we got the bike home and into my shed, where it would stay for the next 3 weeks before my first bmcrc club meeting at brands hatch.

with the bike back in my shed it was time to prepare it as best as i could for the thunderbike uk class that i will be competing in this season. The Thunderbike uk class is a fantastic class that basically works on a power to weight ratio that makes kawasaki zxr 400's competitive against ducati 748 r's!

After a good ol clean up and check over i had a quick look round the engine to see i needed to lockwire all the sump bolts, oil plugs...etc. no one told me how tedious that job really is!

On the week running up to brands we had to fabricate an oil catch tray to comply with the acu regs... tank god for the handbook! we manage to sort this out so on to the spraying. The fairings were black and silver but i decided i wanted a nice redto try and stand out from the crowd(as if my orange novice vest wasnt enough) As my dad had finished doing the spraying on the thursday before the race weekend we thought it may be an idea to go to brands on the friday so some unexpecting fellow 'racers' could be begged and borrowed to help make sure we could get through scrutineering, incase anything was missing.