OXFORD ROUGH 'N' TUMBLE......

Round 3 of the UK flat track GNC took place at Oxford on Friday night. It was a very eventful race. It was raining everywhere else but we had dust and sunshine. Wilky #99 went down in the first turn of the first heat and hurt his wrist. Drogo #27 also had a big crash early on but managed to walk away relatively unscathed. I had fuel problems in my first heat (just happened to be my front row start) and after a strong start limped home in next to last place...not that I'm complaining in view of what was to come in the short track final....a horrible 6 bike accident on the back straight resulting in young Tim Neave #14 getting badly hurt. The fence was destroyed and bikes and bodies were everywhere. the final was cancelled as there was no chance of a restart. It was very sobering to witness and really drives home how much risk is involved with such high speed, close racing.
Anyway despite the crashes and mechanical problems, both me and Wilky scraped into the THUNDERBIKES final....personally I was just happy to not be hurt seeing I was due to have hernia surgery on Monday morning!
Thanks to Matt Davis and Anthony Brown for the pics........

FULL-TILT, BOZO....

Just had a great long weekend Dirt Tracking. Took off with Wilky #99 to the practice session at Rye House on Friday. Hooked up with Steve Red Max, Ant 'n' Geoff from Co-Built and Ben from Sideburn Mag amongst others. Sun was shining, track was awesome.....life was great until my rear wheel bearings disintegrated and my bike threw a chain. The CO-BUILT guys came to the rescue, somehow sourcing a new set of bearings out of business hours and even getting the supplier to post 'em through Anthonys letter box. They were there waiting for us when we arrived back from a stop off at the ACE CAFE on the way home.

Wilky and me were then treated to some overnight CO-BUILT hospitality thanks to Anna and Ant.

Saturday morning was spent with a Co-Built super tune up on my bike. Not only was the rear wheel repaired but an intensive "dialing-in" was carried out. When my bike broke part way through the practice, I took a couple of runs on Ants bike and was knocked out by how well it handled. So, we tried to set up my bike with the same characteristics. The gearing was lowered substantially, the wheelbase shortened, we switched to lower rise handlebars, the forks were dropped in the yolks, lowering the front end and finally, the offset tweaked somewhat.

The end result was my bike handled 100% better! On the Sunday I had one of my most enjoyable race meetings ever and made yet another "A" final with a respectable 7th place finish (I could have possibly pushed it to a 5th or 6th if I had been a bit braver)

Big thanks again to Anthony Brown and Geoff Cain for all their help and hospitality

So all in all, a fab weekend....can't wait for the final round at Scunthorpe on 3rd Oct.