Oulton Park
7 July 2007

It was a bit touch and go as to whether I would be able to make it to Oulton at all for this round, after a major electrical component failure on the bike.
But a trip to Rattler’s down in sunny Camberley not only brought back fond memories from my glowing military career….

“That training exercise went fairly well, except for a couple of incidents... firstly, can anyone tell me why, during a military exercise with NO cilvilian interaction, a brown Morris Marina was parked in the battlefield??”
Cue lots of giggling from the lads, by everyone except the red faced shouty man… and Harrison.

‘yeah, that was Harrison’s. We stole it last week and dumped it there for a laugh’

"which leads me on to a far more important issue… considering we are on British soil, and the Marina posed no direct threat military or otherwise… WHO THE F@CK ORDERED THE AIR STRIKE ON IT??!!!!??!!!"

‘umm, yep, but did you see that f@ckin hill blow apart?? F@ckin awesome!!’

“CURZON!! You’re a disgrace to the unit, you’re a disgrace to the regiment and you’re a disgrace to the human race! Now get out of MY ARMY!!!”…..

Anyway, getting drunk, starting fights and blowing **** up isn’t a real career… more importantly though, the trip to Camberley also brought me back some borrowed electronics and a working bike, wicked!

Set off at death o’clock on the Friday morning to arrive at the Cheshire circuit at 7am, alert and awake and ready for the trackday. Being an Oulton virgin, I figured a day would be enough to learn the circuit. I was wrong. It’s a fast and very technical circuit and too much to learn in one day. Still, I was able to get an idea of where those blind corners went off to, even if I couldn’t learn a decent line through them.

Raceday arrived and having been through scrutineering and signing on the evening before, I was able to chill like a man of leisure until qualifying. I hadn’t been able to change my tyres on Friday like I had hoped, so I was still on the same tyres that I had crashed on at Donington.

Qualified 17th with a 2’14 Not as good as I’d hoped and sat me down at row 5.

Race 1 was called, and Rattler and Domski decided not to turn up to the grid until after they’d finished they’re ready brek… tsk! Sighting lap, oh arse! I stalled it! Stuck my hand up and let everyone else past before restarting the bike and setting off, then reforming for the start of the race. I got a cracking start and set off passing the rows ahead of me, to lay in 7th place! I knew I didn’t have the pace here, so my race strategy was to get as good a start as possible and try to prevent as many people getting back past me as I could. Top plan, eh? I thought I’d managed to only let 3 or 4 people by, but at the end of the race, I had dropped down to 14th. Still an improvement on my qualifying, and my laptime had improved to 2’09.

My strategy for race 2 was more of the same, good start, weave around lots. And so it went with me settling into 8th place on the start, and then seeing Otei’s bike cartwheeling across the grass and him doing a 10foot high flying starjump! This caused race stoppage so a restart went ahead. My start this time wasn’t so sharp, it was ok, but I got unsettled in the first corner and came through in 10th. Freak was able to show me his local knowledge of the circuit and swept by me, then a couple of laps later, so did Lily. Rich Cashmore also snuck by, but I was able to outdrag him down the straight to put him back behind me. Unfortunately, Freak (JPM) dumped oil at chicane 1 and had to pull off track, and the oil flags came out. Lily eased off for the chicane and I considered passing her back, but with the flags out, and not being able to see why Lily had slowed, I didn’t. I waited and took her on the entry to chicane 2 instead! This was short lived though as she showed me a clean set of heels through the woodland section. As we approached chicane 1 again, we saw Hawk and Chris Wood had gone down in the oil and the race red flagged. Lily, myself and Cashmore took 11th, 12th and 13th respectively, covered by less than a second.

Wicked race! Shame about the red flag, and gutting to find Otei being carted off to hospital with concussion and a snapped collar bone.

Get well soon dude! But not too soon, I want those extra points!

An incident in the GSXR Cup race caused the air ambulance to land, which sparked some excitement amongst those watching… they just don’t understand the flashback it causes me, the smoke, the noise, the smell of napalm in the mornings…

i'm now sitting 10th overall in the champeenship. Photo's by Monster998 :-)