Donington Park British Superbikes Round 5 – Bad luck does come in threes!

I was really fired up for Donington Park, I’d just had two completely disastrous rounds at Brands and Oulton. To be honest, I have never felt as low as I did after the disappointment of not getting it together at Oulton, and then the incident at Brands which forced me out the race as well as giving me a good battering and the afterthought of my poor mate Bruce Wilson who I’d accidentally knocked off. Things could only get better surely? Well, at first it looked like they were getting better but then I ran out of Lady Luck once more.

Out in qualifying I was feeling pretty good, I spent over half the session in the top 15 and I was only on part worn tires. I was feeling good, outbraking lots of people in qualifying and then after passing Tom Gazzard on a hot lap I had an almighty slide out of Coppice which violently turned into a tankslapping highside! I managed to land on the tank and there was a mark where I’d landed. Somehow I also managed to run on the grass, bank it over a bit and not go down! Tom was amazed I’d stayed on as he was expecting to have to bail off to avoid hitting me! I got myself together after this though and realized that Coppice was not somewhere I could gain much more time than I already was as I was regularly right up on the kerbing and really close to crashing on a few previous laps.

After remaing 12th for a good while in the session I was then slipping down the order a little with the last 2 min board displayed I was 17th according to my pitboard over the line. I went for a hot lap and for some reason, when I shifted 4th out of Redgate the bike just hit the limiter and crunched. I don’t know if I’d slightly missed the lever but that was it, job done, as I knew I could improve after such a costly mistake on the most important exit on the track! I came back in a little annoyed with myself to be dropped to 23rd on the grid but my race pace was good and I was bang on, with my laptimes being pretty consistent. I was just 1.6 seconds off pole man AJ Venter, so I knew I might be able to improve in 2nd qualifying on Saturday. This wasn’t to be however, as it rained. I was just testing in the rain I went out on old wets as I knew I couldn’t improve my qualy position and we tried a few different things with the rear shock. We went the wrong way with it and I pulled in just before the end of the session very wet!

The warm up went well. I decided to go out on my own and just focus on getting into my race pace. I was 14th fastest, just in front of Jimmy Hill and I was feeling confident I could achieve this kind of position in the race. I felt confident I could get some points. Anyway that was that and off I went for the long wait before my race which was after the 2nd superbike race. I went out on the out lap, and the bike felt really slow and I was thinking ’oh no please don’t say it’s the clutch.’

I went off on the warm up lap and the thing just felt like it was spinning up and not driving passed 10,000rpm. I was gutted, I tried to adjust the clutch as much as I could on the line with Brian Nicholson and I attempted to start the race as it would drive up to 10,000 and I knew I could get off the line safely enough with that kind of revs on the 675. I tried until the bottom of Craner where I realized it was a pointless and dangerous battle. The clutch was fried for sure. Had I had the money for a number 2 bike I’d have been sorted and out there for the race.

I pulled in at the end of the lap on the exit of the Melbourne loop extremely annoyed. You can’t put into words how it feels to have three terrible weekends in a row which have cost thousands of pounds for pretty much nothing! After a great year in 2007 I think I was finding out that the British scene was a lot tougher than I first expected.

Every dark cloud has a silver lining though...

After the race I went to see Co-Ordit owner and team boss Pete Bradshaw, who is also a friend of mine. We did a deal to get me out in Co-Ordit colours for the rest of the year onboard an R6 Yamaha and this was the best thing that has happened to me all season.

By: Sam Middlemas