PROJECT 39 ~ Junior 600 Championship

Time for Round 4 it is then!! With not a great start to the season (i.e. Something happening at every round so far to hamper our chances of winning the championship) Project 39 made an extra special effort to make sure Cadwell went smoothly and were aiming for the top step of the podium.

The weather was fantastic (if not a little too hot & sticky) and it was obvious when we woke up that it was going to be a great day for racing. We went out for practice which was the start of an eventful day. Colins front tyre went down in Hall Bends (very interesting!)for no apparent reason fortunately he got back to the holding area. Thanks to Jill and Nigel at Biketek for their help getting the wheel out and a brand new tyre on in time for qualifying. Andy qualified on pole (1st in class and 2nd overall) with a 2 second gap to 3rd place which we were obviously very happy with. With nothing else to do for the morning and first part of the afternoon we just sat around sunning ourselves and watching the National Race.

15:00 came round...race time!!! Out we went (Andy to start) for the start procedure. Warm up lap done, tyres scrubbed in, and all lined up on the grid waiting for the flag to drop (well most of us waited, some decided to try a false start but it didn’t pay off). Anyhow, the flag dropped and we were away. In Andy’s haste to get the bike started he managed to rotate the switch gear around the bar therefore not getting the best start possible. He managed 4th off the grid then 3rd into the first corner behind two 1000cc bikes (1st in class).
We held this position for the first stint and had a healthy 50 second lead over 2nd place. On the IN Lap the White Flag went out which meant the Safety Car was to make its first appearance but we had no choice, we had to change riders. Andy came in and Colin went out but we got held in pits and lost over 3 minutes!! This put us down to 4th in class.

Colin went out and rode as hard as he could to catch back up as we were almost 2 laps down on the leaders, but towards the end of Colin’s stint the Safety Car made a second appearance and the exact same thing happened again, we racked up another 2 and a half minutes in the pits!! This put us down to 8th in class (out of 11)!

Things really weren’t going our way. We pushed hard for the rest of the race and were challenging for 3rd when 2 bikes touched in Park leaving Colin no option but to go grass tracking down to the marshalls hut! This cost about 10 seconds so sadly we could only come away with 4th place. Andy put in the fastest 600cc lap of the race, and the 2nd fastest 600 lap of the day (behind the National team Ducks X) so not all bad.

Hopes of winning the championship are slowly disappearing as NR Racing run a very steady show and have walked away from each round with a first place, so our short term goal is to get up to second and see what we can do from there...watch this space...
See you at Pembrey (watch out, we know a short cut!). :-)