The Biker Place

The Final 2 rounds; took place as a double header, held as normal supporting the British SuperBike series on the Brands Hatch Indy Circuit in Kent. Held in glorious weather with temperatures reaching 23c on the Saturday it was the best weekend weather wise of the championship. It had also attracted the biggest entry since the start of the year with 61 riders vying for 36 slots on the grid for the race.

A crash in free practice was to see the Scottish youngster Gault, struggle with injury all weekend.

Free Practice held on the Friday morning saw Gault make a promising start, topping the leader board until the 14th lap when a massive ‘High side’ at ‘Clearways’ threw the youngster from the bike at over 100mph. The crash damaged the bike badly although Gault remarkably seamed to have escaped relatively unscathed. However damaged ankle ligaments and a swollen elbow (reminiscent of that famous cartoon character Popeye) were to plague him throughout the weekend.

(One of the marshals who witnessed the crash compared it to Lorenzo’s crash at laguna-seca, it’s very apt Lorenzo holds the same ankle Alex hurt in the crash).

Qualifying 1 Held that afternoon proved to be just that little bit too soon! Although the team mechanics had struggled to repair the damaged bike it was not in time for the start of the session and saw Gault join with only a few laps remaining and with only 4 laps completed the drive chain broke and his bike rolled to a halt at the side of the track.

The fault was later traced to a bent suspension link which had been missed in the initial rebuild.

Q2 Held early on the Saturday morning was Gaults chance to improve on the proceeding days performance which because of events seen him sitting in provisional 34th place on the grid for the race. With the bike now perfect it was the track which let him down, with Q2 held in the morning the track was still covered in morning dew and very slippery, to make matters worse another competitors engine blew up midway through the session, spreading oil on the surface. Again Gault was setting some of the fastest times of the session, but had to retire early with his ankle problem making changing gear extremely difficult. By the time group B took to the track it had dried and was almost perfect to put in a good qualifying time. In the end Gaults’ lap time of 49.544 was only good enough for 25th place on the grid for race, the 24 riders in front of him only separated by 0.9 of a second.

Race 1 and it was no surprise to us we had to withdraw Alex from the race; with the pain he was in the possibility of an accident happening was too great to take the risk. Medical advice had indicated that the injury may be better the next day for race 2 so we postponed our journey home to see if he could take to the grid for race 2 on Sunday.

Morning Warm-up despite the lack of time on track and the pain from his injuries Gault looked good setting the 9th fastest time with a 49.536.

Race 2 It was a brave effort but after only 4 laps Gault hit a false neutral under heavy braking, couldn’t make the corner and went onto the grass, by the time he had recovered he was at the back of the pack to make matters worse the gearbox would not select another gear Gault had no choice but to retire. He ended up finishing 10th overall in the main championship and 4th in the David Jeffries Award for riders less than 19 years of age.

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