Taking The Knocks at Knockhill

Knockhill BSB 18-19 June
Our next meeting came and this time it was a chance to travel to Scotland and the race circuit of Knockhill. For this meeting I had my brother Leigh along to give a helping hand and he was keen to see what the Scottish circuit was like. We took a leisurely ride up on the Friday as we were not out on the bike until Saturday. Once we arrived at the circuit the bike was unloaded into the Harley Davidson awning and our caravan set up for the weekend. This truly is the glitz and glamour of bike racing as we had upgraded from the back of the van accommodation we had at Thruxton!

Free Practice
As with Thruxton it was 10 years since I last raced at Knockhill so was keen to get some laps in around the circuit to learn which way it went after such a long break. Unfortunately for us and is quite of the case with Knockhill the weather as rather inclement and we headed out on to the track in torrential rain. After a few laps of ‘wobbling’ around I soon reacquainted myself with the turns and undulations of the track. The Warr’s XR1200 was handling very well, a lot different from the issues we had at Thruxton and I gained in confidence with each passing lap. He grip from the Dunlops wet tyres was fantastic and this helped us to get faster and faster. We finished the session in 7th place only one second off the fastest time but confident we could go quicker come qualifying.

Qualifying
2:10pm and out we went for our qualifying session. The track was still wet but it was not raining quite as hard so the conditions were a little better than they had been for free practice. I got my head down straight away and after only a few laps was pushing the bike quite hard. I came across the line to see P3 on my pitboard so I knew things were going pretty well. I kept plugging away but then the red flags came out which brought a halt to the session, this was not good timing as I was just starting to go for the last push. Some oil had been spilt on the track so we had to wait for this to be cleaned up. We did go out for the last five minutes once the cleanup had been done but because of the slippery surface it was difficult to know how fast to go. So we had to settle for the time we had done which meant we qualified in 5th position but only half a second off pole. We were all pretty happy with this as we only just missed being on the front row by 1/10th of a second. Looking at the data from the session showed we were also getting good drive out of the turns as we were 2nd and 4th quickest through the speed traps, things were looking good for the races on Sunday.

Warm Up
Sunday morning came and after a good day on the Saturday I was looking forward to getting out on the bike as I was really enjoying riding the Harley around the twists and turns of the Knockhill circuit. The track was damp but starting to dry a little so we opted to keep the wet tyres on for this session. The idea was just to have a steady ride around and get ourselves into gear ready for the races. Well, that was the idea, until whilst starting my second lap I hit the brakes for the first corner which immediately locked the front wheel, I quickly released the brake which brought the bike back into line and I grabbed another handful of brake. But by now I was running out of tarmac so released the brakes again as I took to the mud! This is where our problems got somewhat worse. As it had been raining a lot the mud was very soft and as soon as the bike hit this it dug in and flipped me off the bike. The Harley then decided it wanted to join the Scottish gymnastic team a performed a double back flip with half twist. I ran back to the bike to ensure the engine was turned off and realised it sustained quite a lot of damage. It did take three marshals to get the bike picked up, and they have now been doing weight training to get ready for the next round for the championship. It was a bit of a strange crash as in nineteen years of racing I have only locked the front wheel in a straight line once before so was not something I was expecting to happen. In my defence your honour, a lot of people had taken a tumble there over the course of the weekend so I was not on my own.

Race
As the bike was beyond repair from the morning ‘Warm Up’ crash we were unable to compete in the races. As this was a double header with two races this was a real blow and we left Knockhill severely disappointed as to what could have been.

Unfortunately this has now ruined our championship aspirations so from this point on we will just have to go out and get the best results we can.

For further info check out the series website at http://xr1200trophy.harley-davidson.co.uk/

The next meeting is at Snetterton in Norfolk on the 2nd/3rd July, due to not being able to get the bike repaired in time it looks as if we will have to miss this meeting but we should be back in action at Oulton Park on the 16th/17th July. So if you can make it, please come along and offer your support, if not you can catch the races live on Eurosport or check the live timing at TSL Timing (http://www.tsl-timing.com/?loc=major&season=2011&series=BSB&event=races)

Lastly a big thanks to all our sponsors that enable us to be out there competing.