Day 5… The Race

It was really good… I mean we got 4th and my lap times come down, come down, all the way throughout the whole session. I wish I’d put them times in right at the start, then everything would have changed. I feel I let everyone down; if I’d pushed that little bit harder and got them 1.6 seconds back things would have been different and there’d have been a bit of silverware… and that would have tasted a lot sweeter than the bitter taste of 1.6 fucking seconds. But the fact the laps times were coming down is a good thing, it means that I was tipping on and getting it moving. Take that away, and it’s a wicked way of racing, you know; endurance racing is like nothing else. Cos it’s ain’t just blam, first corner, elbows… which has it’s place and respect for those guys… but you come up, you go down, you’re swapping places, pit stops. I was kept up the top there, waiting by the flag guy for around 10 seconds, so bit sore about that cos I was definitely held for more than 2 seconds. But I ain’t gonna get wrapped up in it, cos on reflection, it was a fucking great time. But because I brought it home it does make you feel like you’ve let the fucking team down, I can’t help it… I feel like if I’d pushed a little bit fucking more, and manned up and been a bit more fucking ballsy, we’d have some silverware. I know everyone will be all vibey and it’ll be nice… but deep down I’m pissed.

Flinty

If there was ever a worse start to an endurance race in terms of weather… I can’t imagine it! We’d all set ourselves out on wet and slick tyres, then the rain started coming in so fast there was no time to do anything but go to the grid with the wrong tyres on… so you’re sitting there knowing, these tyres won’t work. But it’s the same for everybody… so Le Mans style start, got a cracker again and took a few places going into the first corner, then approaching the 2nd corner I managed to cruise up the inside of possibly 4 or 5 riders, ending up 3rd in the race… nice feeling but I started thinking, am I going to fast, am I going to come off? Kept it going but lost a couple of places, the rain went and I started finding grip… the rain had gone so I signalled to stay out and got quicker and quicker, starting to run dry times which was a just a huge relief to get rid of the slippery, shitty, wet weather. We pretty much bottomed out in the end at around 11th, not really moving up or down much from there. We flirted with 3rd place in our class… but ended up missing out by 1.6 seconds after 3 hours of racing, so it’s really a tough result to live with, to miss out by that much. But we finished, Keith’s times are really good, I’m back in the game, a good weekend’s racing… everyone’s going home safe and sound and that’ll do.

Paul

This week Keith has gone from being a very fast track day rider, to finishing this weekend a proper racer. He’s come back from this final race here and with lap times… well he’s blown me away a bit really. I always thought he could do 2.06s, 2.07s… but he’s actually done 2.05.3s. He was catching the guys in front of him, just 1.6 seconds off the podium… we started the weekend in very tricky conditions, never really had a fantastic dry set up; though we had a very good wet setup. The weather came round to us and we had pretty much a 3 hour dry race… and Keith used his head, using it as a test really; 3 half-hour sessions, and each time he went out I told him to treat them as a test and the times will come down for you. That’s what he did and really I can’t praise him enough for what he’s done.

Mark