Round 2: Snetterton 300

Wet, dry, wet, dry…wet.

Round 2 of the Hottrax Endurance championships brought us to Snetterton for the first time this year, to race the 300 circuit.

All week the weather had been on and off raining, but on the Friday we seemed to be in luck, with it holding off. Track time was limited so it was a bit of a struggle to get a good set up with only 15-minute sessions. The track is around a 2 minute lap at the best of times, so you don’t get many in.

The heavens opened late in the afternoon so we got one wet session in before we packed up for the day.

With the format changing this year, we now qualify and race on the Saturday, so there’s always loads to do. It stayed dry for qualifying and Ben went out first, followed by Keith. We were really pleased to qualify second in class.

As race time got nearer, we had our ritual team meeting, where we discuss strategy, timings and communications. We had left off putting race tyres on the bikes and following the meeting Keith, Madge and Michael went out to do a bit of weather reporting. While it definitely looked like rain was in the air, it wasn’t here yet, so it was decided that Ben would go out on slicks. Literally, as the lights went out and the bikes left the grid, it started spitting.

That spitting got heavier and by lap 3 we had hailstones bouncing off our heads! We had left the decision to come in to Ben, but already we knew that he wouldn’t be able to stay out much longer. Because it was the first session we were able to change rider early on, so the guys made sure Keith was ready, with wets on. When Ben came in we got Keith straight out.

Keith completed that first session. The rain kept on coming down, getting heavier and heavier, but we were P1 – first in class - when Ben went out. Everything was going well when…disaster struck. We were expecting Ben to come round, and when he didn’t we got that sinking feeling in our stomach. Two of the team legged it to race control, where we saw pictures of Ben’s bike by the side of the track at the Bomb Hole. But no Ben. The guys in the tower told us that he was last seen grabbing the transponder and running in the opposite direction. At that, Jim ran to meet him, and like a pair of Olympic relay runners they got the transponder back.

This meant that Keith had to go out again, so we sent him back out into a wall of rain. While Keith was out Ben’s bike was delivered back on a truck and Simon and Jim worked relentlessly to get it track-worthy. When Keith’s 30 minutes was up he came back in, frozen and drenched. The track was becoming treacherous, there were lots of accidents, visibility was poor and Ben’s bike was still not fixed.

As a team we had decisions to make. Did we push ahead trying to fix the bike, accept we were out of the title chase and ride for points? If we couldn’t get the bike fixed could we ask Keith to go back out again so soon in those conditions? We had 20 minutes to make that call, and with 5 to go Madge spoke to Keith and it was agreed he would go out again. There was no let up on the weather, he’d hardly had time to get warm, but Keith rode every lap for the points, bringing the bike back safely after another arduous 20 minutes.

In that 20 minutes the guys got the bike fixed, through scrutineering and back to the garage in time to get Ben out for the last session. We knew we still had 7 points to play for, and we finished the race with those in the bag.

The weather certainly played its part in the afternoon’s events. It provided the most testing conditions, and we didn’t get what we wanted out of the afternoon. Ben suffered little more than battered pride to go with the battered bike, which was the important thing, and the team pulled together in a way that proved that when the chips were down (or soaked) we could still remain focused and calm. A lot of lessons learned and we can’t wait now for Round 3.

Check out the video and images in the gallery.