12th July 2003 - Croix En Ternois

Not the best sleep I have ever had but it wasn't too bad. The biggest problem was the change in temperature when it suddenly got very cold at three o'clock in the morning. A cooked breakfast to start the day was followed by the ten minute morning practice which went fairly well. The sun was out, the sky was blue and the only thing I had to worry about was getting sunburnt or dehydrating.

Race 1 - Mini Twins

My new starting technique worked really well on the warm up lap although my brakes almost gave me a heart attack at the first corner when they didn't want to stop me. I just managed to miss the gravel and kicked myself for not letting the pads bed in after I cleaned them up before the race. All lined up for the race, the lights changed and I stalled it on the line. No! I got it going but was last off the grid by a good ten yards. I was determined not mess up the race so set off at a fast pace and made it by two other guys in the first corner and another two on the second. Jason Loveridge was just in front of me with Andrew Williams just on the outside. I thought about undertaking Andrew but deciding to wait as it looked like he wanted to make a move on Jason.

Sure enough Andrew tried to get in front of Jason on the way in to the double right hander and was about half a bike length in front but instead of just peeling in he suddenly swerved to the left to get a better line. Unfortunately Jason was still using that space and had his front wheel bashed quite hard and down he went right in front of me. I braked pretty hard as there was no gap between the bike and Jason rolling down the road only for the bike to slide off to one side and Jason to slow down right in front of me. The back wheel of my bike was in the air as I fought to miss Jason and I managed to come to a dead stop just a foot from his head.

All the guys I had overtaken now came by while I waited for a space to get by Jason and I set off swearing loudly. I managed to get those four back in the next lap, including two when braking for the first corner at the end of the straight. I was right on the back of the next two guys on the way under the bridge and ran a little wide on the way out. No problem I thought until the bike disappeared out from underneath and I started tumbling down the road and in to the gravel. Despite bashing myself quite hard on the edge of the rumble strip I was able to get up and hobble to the edge of the track. It turned out that Chris Firmin had run wide through the gravel and had sprayed some on to the track where I crashed.

I was a bit battered and had sprained my wrist but the bike had seen better days. The cracked screen and bent fairing frame from the previous day were a real mess, my nice new paint job was hacked to bits and the rest of the fairing and assorted holes and cracks all over it. To top it all Andrew Williams finished in 5th and Phil Turtle was in 4th doing slower times than I had managed in the practice the previous day! Aarrgghh! To say I wasn't happy was an understatement but I was still in one piece and given the stalling incident and having Jason fall off in front of me followed by a big crash I was just thankful nothing more serious had gone wrong.

Race 2 - Mini Twins

Due to not finishing the first race I was due to start at the back of the grid which was a bit of a change to my usual mid field place. For a while it was doubtful whether I'd even make it out for the race but somehow I managed to finish fibreglassing the fairing, making new brackets for the seat unit, etc. about 20 minutes before the race was called. I managed to get everything scrutineered and just made it to the line in time.

I had to get a decent start if I wasn't going to lose my position in the championship. I was seventeen points behind Gary Nicholas on the way in to this round and he'd managed to finished sixth in the first race to widen that gap. I made a decent start with the new technique and overtook the front row before the first corner. I decided to go up the inside rather than risk the outside route as it was a bit crowded. That wasn't the best approach as Gary Morris managed to fall off a couple of bikes up ahead and I ended up getting boxed in by his bike, him and Jason Loveridge just in front of me so I had to wait for everyone else to go round the outside before I could move. Only it didn't quite work out like that, I couldn't go anywhere until Jason got out of the way and he waited for Gary to get to his feet and then still didn't move. I ended up swearing a lot and pushed the bike backwards and headed off round the outside.

To say my day was going from bad to worse was an understatement and my mood wasn't improving either. I set off and put my head down hoping to make up a few places along the way. Any thoughts of a top six position went out the window as I would never get back with those guys now. I managed to reel in and catch a couple of guys on the next lap before overtaking them at the end of the straight. I chased down another guy on the next lap and eventually went round the outside on the big left hander after the bridge. I would have done it the previous lap but he ran so wide I had to shut off and brake on the way through that corner so as not to end up on the grass.

I could see the next guy in the distance and although I was lapping a little faster than him it took another two or three laps to get close enough to pass. Turns out it was Andrew Williams again, what do I have to do to beat this guy? I fell back a little when I overtook him round the outside of the left hander but he then outbraked me in to the hairpin shortly afterwards. I knew it was only a couple of laps form the end so I got back with him at the end of the straight and was just lining him up when everything went pear shaped.

The first thing I knew was a loud screech followed by a short scraping sound and then a big bang as I got hit from behind. Well, it wasn't actually behind as I had already turned in to the corner so it was more like a T-bone straight on to my hip! The leader of the race had been coming up to lap me and had lost the front on the brakes and taken me out. After all my hard work, pain and expense of the weekend so far the idiot had taken me out of the race. Turns out he had a good two hundred yards over the second place guy so all he needed to do was slow down a little and his highly tuned Ducati would have blasted by on the next straight. The only consolation was that he crashed as well, gifting the lead to Steve Bullimore who I have known since my Rookie 600 days. Turns out that this guy was the only person capable of catching Steve's lead in the championship so it serves him right!

I guess that is the disadvantage of running the Super Twins with the Mini Twins on such a short twisty circuit but that's racing. My first though was to swear loudly at him which was met with him telling me the crash was my fault and that I should have seen the blue flags and got out of the way. Prat! First of all the golden rule with blue flags is to stick to your line and be consistent and secondly, the corner commander told me later, there were no blue flags being shown. After a bit more swearing the marshals had picked up my bike so I went over and asked if it was safe for me to continue. Turned out that my footpeg mounting had folded in half so there was nowhere to rest my foot. As I couldn't carry on racing I went back to swear at the guy who had knocked me off!

He still insisting it was my fault and made no attempt to apologise. I don't normally lose my temper but crashing for the second time in a day, particularly after only just finishing to rebuild my bike, and then being told it was my fault over and over again really got to me. All he had to do was apologise and I would have left him alone and gone off to sulk in the corner but he just refused to accept that he had done anything wrong. In the end I got so mad that one of the marshals ended up getting in between us to make sure I didn't hit him! I wouldn't have done as that isn't my style but I haven't been that angry for a long time.

The race eventually finished I was able to ride my bike slowly back to the pits. I couldn't put my foot on the peg and it turned out that my front brake lever had gone so I couldn't really stop quickly but there was no way I was going to share the recovery van with the other guy. I did make sure I got alongside it and, as childish as it may seem, took great satisfaction at giving him the finger on the way by. Andrew Williams ended up finishing in 7th with Gary in 6th. There goes my next position in the championship and it was only the fact that Gary Morris crashed that stopped him getting too close as well.

As luck would have it, if luck is the right word, I had a spare lever and a spare footrest backing plate. Well, I had a slightly less bent one from my crash in the wet at Snetterton but it appeared to work okay. The fairing frame was even more bent, the clip on was at an interesting angle (the one I had only just replaced from the first crash) and the bodywork was broken again. It was another long night with the fibreglass repair kit but I eventually got everything back to being vaguely bike shaped although my nice new Akrapovic exhaust had some big dents in it!

My biggest concern was the state of my body as I could hardly walk due to the bruises and sprains and I knew it would be worse the following day!