SCARBOROUGH GOLD CUP

The Gold Cup at Oliver’s Mount, Scarborough certainly proved to be an eventful weekend. I was riding the MotoSP Kawasaki ZXR that we have been contesting the ThundersportGB rounds on this year and I was also riding Sean Kelly’s 2007 Honda RS250, a lovely bit of kit. I hadn’t even sat on the RS250 before so it was due to be a bit of a learning weekend. We arrived on Friday afternoon and fettled the bikes, making some adjustments to the suspension on the 250 (No.71 in between Lougher and Dunlop on the photo left) and generally getting things to fit. Saturday morning came and into free practice and qualifying. This went really well when I managed to qualify the ZXR in 2nd place on the grid, just behind Dan Frear and in front of Ryan Farquar. I qualified the 250 in 4th place in front of none other than John McGuiness on the Padgetts Honda. Sean appeared to be very happy at this.
I was out on the ZXR first and as usual my start was a little poor. Trying to make up ground as quick as possible unfortunately on the 2nd lap turning in to Quarry bend I clipped the rear wheel of Ivan Linton who was going much slower than me in the middle of the corner. This caused the bike to sit up and send me heading straight for the fence and hedge at about 80mph. I quickly laid the bike down and prepared for impact. I bounced back off the fence and to my surprise was not injured; I looked across at the bike to see it upside down in the hedge. Not a great start to the weekends races. If you know the Oliver’s Mount circuit at all you will know it is not the place you want to crash at, I have to thank my lucky stars on that one.
The 250 race later that day went a lot better and although I was taking it a bit steadier after the crash earlier that day I managed to come home in 5th place just behind McGuiness this time (although I do have him behind me in the photo left). The race was won by Ian Lougher from William Dunlop so at least I was in very good company.
We got the ZXR back after the final race of the day and Birdy set about repairing it. Leigh took the bodywork home to repair as there were a few cracks and we had to beg, steal and borrow a few other parts to make it track worthy again.
Sunday was a lot better and again I was out on the ZXR first, although it was looking a little second-hand being held together with duct tape. This time I managed to keep it upright and although I couldn’t match my qualifying times from the day before we still came home on the podium in 3rd place. I guess I was still a bit cautious from the previous day’s events.
Our last race of the weekend was again back on the 250 and my confidence in the bike had been growing all weekend. A great race saw me hanging on to the shirt tails of Vernon and McGuiness in 3rd and 4th place respectively but couldn’t quite mount a challenge. We therefore secured another 5th place but took comfort in the fact we had taken 2 seconds off our lap time from the previous day. If anyone wants they can ask about my rodeo riding on the warm up lap but for now I think we will leave that for another day.
All in all a pretty good weekend apart from a little mishap.