3rd July 2003 - Mallory Park

Around this time last year I was asked to instruct on a track day for the Neil Hodgson Supporters Club at Mallory Park. I can't have done too bad a job as I was asked to do it again this year. My overriding memory of the last visit was pulling in to the pit garages just before taking the novices round as the fuel light had come on and I needed to fill up in a hurry. I shouted to a friend to get him to hold the bike whilst I put the fuel in but he didn't hear. I shouted again and he didn't hear me but Neil did. A bit of a come down for him but I can now tell everyone that Neil Hodgson looked after my bike whilst I poured fuel in to it!

Last year Neil came with Steve Hislop, this time around Steve Plater and Paul Young accompanied Neil. I didn't get much time to speak to Neil as was holding court in the cafeteria whilst I was out on the track but I did have a fairly long chat with Steve Plater about the pros and cons of different vans for transporting bikes around the place. Top bloke!

The day itself was fairly uneventful although it was fairly wet in the morning so most people made the wise choice to join Neil and Steve for coffee rather than risk the puddles out on track. It was drying out by lunch time so we had a few more customers who wanted instruction including a rather tentative lady on a very nice Ducati 998. Can't say I blame her for being nervous as she was running Metzeler Rennsports which have no tread on the outer edges of the tyres. I chickened out and swapped my Rennsports for my wet wheels during the wet period.

After the lunch time stunt show with Craig Jones we set about picking up the pace a little and I took the opportunity to scrub in my nice shiny dry tyres. I've always raced on Dunlops and this was my first outing on Metzelers. They felt strange at first and made it hard to gauge how fast I was going as they felt very stable. On picking up the pace the did start to squirm a little but I think it will take me a few races to get the hang of them.

There were a couple of accidents in the afternoon, someone decided to do their best Superman impression and literally flew out of the Bus Stop, whilst another guy completed mashed his nice shiny MV on the exit of Edwina's corner. Their timing was exceptionally poor as they happened within minutes of each other requiring both ambulances to leave the circuit and take them to hospital. Without ambulances present we couldn't go out on track (not that I would have wanted to without decent medical cover) so the day was shortened by an hour.