Well, I haven’t been to Pembrey for a long while and its one of my favorites so I was really looking forward to the weekend, I was riding for Bill from BLDS Couriers who sponsors my good friend Craig Fitzpatrick this weekend in the Junior 1000 event.

We did the Friday test day and I spent some time with Bill getting his line right and improving his speed and then I had a little time to play myself before the rain started, everything felt good and I got back in the circuit pretty quickly despite having the lingering effect of man flu going on again. In the wet in the afternoon I only got one session but it was enough to know the new settings on the bike really are dry and not wet settings! – at least I know for the morning should it rain……

And rain it did – all night! So practice and qual was wet and the changes I made were in the right direction – also made some tweaks to Bills bike to get him some confidence and it seemed to work as he knocked around 10 secs off his wet times – he was definitely up for the weekend and more than prepared to go and give it a good shot. The traffic in Qual was amazing and a clear lap seemed impossible so I came in to avoid killing the tyres as they were the only wet set I had and a dry line was starting to appear. We got 5th overall and 3rd in class.

The race was dry and I was starting as Bill seems more concerned about going arse over tit getting the bike than he is actually riding it, all good to me as I enjoy the starts, I got a good run and away in 3rd, the two in front where pretty eager and making a few erratic moves so I stayed in station for a few laps to let them calm down a bit and then picked them off on lap 3 and from there on got in the grove and pulled away gently, on the swop over we had around a 40 sec lead, all good.

Bills session went well and he really was riding his socks off although he seemed to get the faster of the two riders in the other team and when he came in I went out side by side with the opposition, again I pulled a gap on him and Bill went out with nearly a full lap and this time managed to maintain the lead a bit better giving me the opportunity to pull a lead so he could relax in the last session, unfortunately the pace care was pulled out near the end of my session but we had over a full lap on 2nd place. I came in to pit under the pace car but Bill was held at Pit lane and we lost the lap we had gained, we ended up crossing the line in second – however – it was then deemed that Bill should not have lost the lap at pit lane and they gave us back the lap meaning that we had still won by 18 secs short of a full lap – but because the chequered flag was waved at the other team and we then crossed the line 2nd (as at the time they were deemed to be in front) it was taken that they won – even tho we were a full lap in front on real time. We did talk to the official but there was no movement even tho they could not explain to us the decision in terms we understood. We chose not to argue as we are not in the championship and it really wasn’t that important – they may be right but I still cannot work out the logic in the decision. The guys who won rode really well and you can’t knock them the win either.

Nigel from Slaters Bikes gave us the trophy for extra effort to soften the blow a bit. So all in all, great company and good racing, fantastic circuit and a good time had by all.

The journey there and back in the old transit was not quite as easy but that’s another story…..