2019 Ducati Cup underway.
Another season started with this amazing group of people. I have handed over the THR instagram to another member of the team so that will free me up a little at the meetings to concentrate on the task in hand. It will also mean that the instagram feed will be a little more real time rather than images being posted retrospectively. You can find it here:
https://www.instagram.com/trueheroesracing/
It also means I can put a little more time into my tumblr to keep everyone updated.
The first race meeting of the year is always a bit manic with finishing touches falling into place and everything settling in. Our team is all voluntary so we never know until the weekend starts who we are going to get. This season there are plenty of new faces joining us which is a good thing. A race weekend is a big production so having plenty of hands on deck (team manager is Royal Navy so that’ll keep him happy) is essential. There are quite a few people missing from this team image, they left a little early before the final tear down. It’s always a challenge getting everyone who helps out into a group photo but this will probably be the biggest number we manage to get in one place at one time.
From a racing point of view it was a mixed bag for myself and the other riders. We ran three bikes at Silverstone for the opening round. Two Ducati 959 Panigales in the Ducati Cup and a GSXR1000 in the Superstock 1000 class. Myself and Dave “Salty” Sellers are pretty much guaranteed a race so our qualifying is more about grid position than actually getting to race. Jim Walker who rides the SSTK1000 bike has a tougher time. The early meetings are always over-subscribed for the amount of grid slots so qualifying is the order of the day. Jim has had bike issues the last couple of outings so never really got up to speed on the new bike. This meant that by the time the niggles were sorted it was his qualifying session. Needless to say, without valuable track time prior to his qualifying he was on the back foot. He didn’t qualify to race but at least the bike issues are solved and we can look forward to the next round at Oulton Park.
In the Ducati Cup qualifying session I never really got my finger out and only managed to secure 24th on the grid. A good 1.5 seconds off my pace from last year. Salty was up to speed straight away and managed a good solid 9th on the grid.
Race 1 of the weekend didn’t quite go to plan for me. Having done one outlap and two green flag laps I was all fired up to make a bit of progress and get up to the riders I usually run with. I got a cracking start and passed quite a few riders before turn one. That’s when it all went a bit pear shaped, as I pushed the right handle bar to turn in there was very little resistance and I had to sit up and run wide off the track. Turns out the bar had sheared half way through at the clamp end. With it hanging on by a thread I limped back to the pits and that was my race over. Although it was disappointing I count myself very lucky it happened where it did and how it did. We will never know why the component failed so there is no point dwelling on it. Salty had a better time and ended up finishing 8th which is the best result the team has ever had in a National race.
Race 2 Grid positions go off fastest lap time for race 1 so Salty dropped down to 10th on the grid and I was relegated to 33rd and had a lot of work to do. This time fortune favoured me but Salty went down early on in the race with a high side just before coming onto the Wellington straight. Big hit to his head but he got up and staggered away. I remember seeing his bike and visor lying in the track as I went by so I knew he’d had a knock. Bike was ok(ish) and he was fine. I got a good start again and managed to pass nine riders on the first lap. Things then settled down and the work started to catch the group in front of me. All were riders who I would normally be battling with but they were just out of reach. Prior to the race I knew that if I didn’t get near them early on I would struggle as we are all on the same bikes and running roughly the same lap times. I was mindful that to crash would be a blow to morale so the urge to push was somewhat diminished, especially having seen my team mate go down. Perhaps the wrong mindset to have but a finish was required to set me up for the next meeting. P33 to P19 was ok and although I was .5 second a lap slower than last year I was happy to bring it home.
Next round is Oulton Park in two weekends time so preparations have already begun. The team vehicles are stored in different locations so depending on where the next meeting is dictates where they are stored. All have gone to the respective locations and once our shop stock and victuals are replenished we should be good to go for a little visit to Chesire. Oulton Park is also the first meeting for our Sidecar so the workload will increase slightly.
Action shot by Barry Clay.
My HJC Helmet provided by Oxford Products and custom sprayed by Dylan from Dr Kolor. Sponsor Logo is Kinetic6
