E2E Racing News
27 May 2012
Double Points Double For Lee @ Oulton Park
Lee takes both wins @ Oulton Park, both of which were double points races which means he extends his lead in the championship even further to over 200 points! Lee P. has a practice day from hell but managed to score some points in the 2nd race on Saturday.
Rider reports below:
Lee R's Report:
I'd been looking forward to Oulton Park for weeks, its just one of those circuits you just have to love - but a difficult circuit to master! The weather was hot!!
We'd got 3 practice sessions on Friday morning, I'd got some lap time targets in mind and started by making good progress to begin with, however before the final session there was a few incidents out on track and half the track ended up having cement dust down on the racing line, which really blew any chance of me pushing on towards my target time.
In qualifying I knew who to be looking out for and Stuart gave me all the right data on my lap board, I set a time I thought would be good enough for pole and pulled in - we were spot on and I got pole by 1.16 seconds.
On the Saturday we had two great races, both times fighting with Josh Daley in the first parts, the kid can ride and is like some crazy rabid dog that won't give up, every time I passed him he jumped back under me at the next apex, so in both races I had to make strategic passes and then slow him up mid corner so I could then make a break. It worked in both races and I was then able to get my head down and make the break both times.
Stuart gave me awesome info from the pit boards which allowed me to control the race from the front, whenever I got a gap less than 1 second I had enough in hand to step up the pace a little and keep the lead.
We now have a really comfortable lead in the championship - Thanks again to the whole team!
We will be working on the bike before the next round as I really want to improve the ground clearance on the bike, a couple of times when I was fighting with Josh I nearly crashed as the belly pan is bottoming out on the deck and peeling the bike off the tyres - I'm sure its something we can fix with a few tweaks!
Lee P.'s Report:
I arrived on Thursday evening, the weather was fantastic and I was feeling good.
Friday practise was challenging as I had decided to change my gear lever to racing shift, the opposite to road shift. Four laps in and things were feeling great, so I decided to follow a bike which I new was quick round here. As I entered “Knickerbrook” corner I realised I was in the wrong gear and decided to change from 2nd to 3rd, unfortunately I forgot about the racing shift and dropped it into 1st!!!!! Obviously this caused me some issues and the bike spat me off. I managed to head butt the track which badly damaged my lid, bruised my right elbow and fortunately, only had light damage to the right hand side of the bike so I was very lucky. The team put my bike back together whilst I put myself back together and we were back out in the next session. My lap timer was not working so I had no idea what times I was doing, although I new they were well off the pace. After lunch was qualifying, during my second lap I was heading towards “Hizzy’s chicane” and as I approached my breaking point I grabbed a hand full of NOTHING!! and ran straight on to the tarmac slip road. I pulled into the pits and the team notified me that my left hand side break calliper had lost one bolt which allowed the calliper to twist away from the disc. By time this was fixed I had run out of qualifying time and had to start 17th out of 23.
I had two great starts but eventually got caught and over taken by most of the bikes I had passed on the start. Race one I finished 17th and race two I finished 15th, at least I got 2 points from a hard weekend.
Once again a huge thanks to the team for all their help.
Looking forward to Snetterton, this will be my first visit here so I have a fresh clean sheet to start with.
23 May 2012
Mallory Park TV Coverage Online
Watch two of the races from Mallory Park: