Cadwell Park 27 – 29 August 2011, British Superbikes

Another good race moves Grant to 10th in the standings!

FP1 – Grant went into the weekend knowing he had a good understanding of the Lincolnshire circuit. He knew this session would be vital to his goals for the weekend. Grant felt happy with the bike throughout the session & was improving his time every lap. He decided to stay out for the duration of the 30minute session. He impressively put his quickest lap of the session in at the end of his 19 lap stint. His time of 1.34.115 put him 3^rd, only 0.585 off the pace of the leader, even on used tyres.

Q1 – this was later in the day & with the track a little damp from a small rain shower. Grant opted to go out on wet tyres. Throughout the session the sun broke through and lap by lap positions were changing & people were pitting for dry tyres. With 10minutes to go, Grant decided to come into the pits to change tyres. With the track still a little damp in places, he only changed the rear tyre keeping the front wet in. With 1 flying lap to go Grant was all the way down in 20+ position. He knew he had to improve quickly as a safeguard for the following session. On his last lap he posted a time of 1.35.697 which put him in 4^th position and that’s how he ended the session. This was great & Grant surprised himself, thinking it would have been a slow lap instead of a quick one, which was really positive for all concerned.

Q2 – this was the following day and with the weather a lot brighter, meant that the times would be a lot quicker. Grant got into a good grove & was putting in good consistent times. Everything on the bike was working well & at the end of the session Grant was just about to post a quicker lap, but that was halted as the red flag came out. Grant was very disappointed as he felt he could have improved on his time. This left Grant 9^th on the grid, row 3 for the race on Monday.

Warm-up – Grant used this time to make sure everything was working as it should on the bike. He also wanted to try to work on his body position & lines ready for the race.

Race – Grant was starting on the back of row 3. The 14 lap race started, Grant got a great start, wheeling a little but he managed to work his way up to 6^th position. He got a good run down the back straight & maintained his position. Unfortunately the race was brought to a stop with the red flag being shown. The race was stopped due to a crash.

After a little while the race was re-started. This would now be a 12 lap race. At the re-start Grant got another great start. With this he yet again gained more places. He had a couple of hair-raising moments with the back tyre spinning; this caused Grant to drop down the positions into 10^th. Once again the race was red flagged after 8 laps due to the earlier incident from the first start, as the air ambulance had to leave.

Altogether a good weekend for the team, which was overhauled by the death of a friend & rider in the National Superstock 600 Championship, Ben Gautrey. This was such a shock to hear and a terrible loss, all of the team would like to offer our condolences to Ben’s family & friends.

A massive thank-you to all the support Grant and the team had over the weekend especially from Chip at Ashton Service Centre which is always very appreciated.

Grant would especially like to thank his Mum, Dad, Sister, Girlfriend Laura & mechanic ‘Sam’ for all their help over the weekend. Also, to Jonathon, Lynda, Phillis, Sam, Max, Ray, Tom, Nixi, Simon and friends that came to support the team on race day.

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Championship Standings After 9 Rounds