Cadwell Park 21st March

Well first meeting of the year and after nearly 6 months off I was definately ready for it. Got to Cadwell for about lunch time on Saturday and suprise suprise it was raining. Went to watch a bit of the sprint racing, which I will add is the most pointless racing I have ever seen, but whatever floats your boat I suppose.

Id planned to get scrutineered on Saturday but by the time Nige and Margaret got there and we’d put the awning up on the cara-shed it was too late so the bar was the only option. Was a bit worried actually when we got to the bar as it was dead and I thought it was going to be a bit of a quiet meeting but there was a few people in there that we knew. So from there it was straight to bed.

Woke up to Pete Hillaby’s (clerk of the course) voice shouting that we were all going to be late to scrutineering so jumped out of bed only to discover it was half seven. Hmmmm. Got to scruntineering had no problems and went to sign on with no problems, so we should’ve known it was too good to be true and that something was about to go wrong.

First practice then and I was really really nervous, I think it must’ve been because it was the first meeting of the year really. By the time we got to the holding bay, I was ok again. Practice generally went ok, it felt good to be back on the bike again and my new leathers weren’t really causing me too many problems. We were supposed to be running an engine in and whether we didnt do enough steady laps or it was just one of them things, something was about to go wrong in a big way.

I thought we’d take the first race fairly steady as it was only four laps but as soon as the lights go out its very difficult to make yourself do enough steady laps. Id had a look at the programme before hand and thought we could probably finish 3rd or 4th and I think we might have just got a 3rd. However coming out of the old hairpin it started making nasty noises and pissed oil everywhere so we pulled into the pit lane with me calling the bike every name under the sun. As far as we could see the engine had gone pop and that was going to be that.

So after spending an hour or so feeling pissed off and frustrated it was time to pick the bike up from the pit lane at lunch time and again I spent the next hour or so mooching about. Nigel actually reckoned it was something to do with the timing casing bolt coming off, actually im not 100% sure that was what he’d said as i’d stopped listening by that point, all I know is, he’d gone to see if anyone had a spare. And they did. So Nige decided to fill it back up with oil and see how it sounded, he reckoned it sounded ok, so thought we’d give the second race a try.

So second race, and we didnt even get as far as we had done in the first race as we stopped at Hall Bends on the first lap. Oh well that was that. So it was an early bath and a crap start to the season.

Another thing thats annoyed me and probably Nigel, we’ve now got to do Thruxton, the first British Championship round, on a standard engine, so might not even qualify, so we’ll just see how that one goes.

Off to Mallory on Wednesday with Ed on the Imp and then its Pembrey a week on Saturday so lets hope that goes better.

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