BUCKMORE PARK SUPER 1

What a mixed up meeting! Friday Mike was doing 41.5 second laps session after session, testing the Magura brake. Saturday briught rain, but the TEC-MEC chassis loves the rain, but Mike took a while getting on with the brakes in the damp, which sadly culminated in the timed qualifying with him doing just a couple of laps before they jammed on! The axle had moved and the floating disc was force up against one of the pads, so 41.9 was his best, which was almost a second off the quickest, so he lost valuable points.

With a new axle and brake to fit overnight, Sunday started poorly as the carb failed in the practice, so the first real test of the system was the first heat, where Mike started 25th and came in 12th. A similar result for heat 2 when Mike was struggling to get any power down on the track. In heat three, Mike started at the front, but was soon pushed into the tyres at the end of the straight. He had to wait for the others to pass before setting off at the back almost 100 metres behind the pack. In 8 laps he caught the slower drivers and finished 15th, which meant he just scraped into the A final towards the back.

In the final Mike was soon up into 15th place, passing 10 drivers in just 5 laps. With 11 laps to go a podium was almost possible, but he was blocked for 3 laps by a slower driver, as his engine seemed to be lacking power. He pressed on and eventually finished 11th, only to find in park ferme that his bottom jet had been screwed closed, meaning he had very little fuel going into the engine. This was later compounded when the flex from the exhaust manifold into the exhaust was snapped in two. One assumes this was a result of the previous shunt from behind in heat 3.

All in all a poor meeting at a circuit Mike normally does well at. Despite this he is still 8th, with a couple of rounds to go, so a top 5 seeded place, is still possible.