The Biker Place

Tom Weeden went out in qualifying on a cloudy, foggy, but dry morning at the Mallory Park circuit and just took it easy for a few laps to run in a new piston. Then he started to put in some quick laps, but didn’t push too hard as he knows his starts are so good that it really doesn’t matter where he qualifies, as long as its somewhere near the front. In the end he qualified 6th.

Tom was 7th in the championship before this round due to a run of bad luck so far. He had had a detonated piston in round 1, a DNF when his chain snapped in the assembly area in round 2. Two DNF’s when he had a crash and needed to have an operation on his finger round 3. So Tom really needed some good finishes to boost him up the standings.

Race 1 (10 laps )

By now the rain had set in at Mallory Park as usual.

Tom got a good start from 6th on the grid and was 1st into the first corner “Gerrards”. John Lea overtook him into Edwina’s, and pulled away from him. Tom was in second, closely followed by Ross Humphries, Adam Robinson and Danny Smith. On the 4th lap John fell off. Ross got pass Tom on the 5th lap and pulled a slight gap on him. Then on the last lap Adam got pass Tom going into Edwina’s, then going into the hairpin he saw a yellow flag and knew that he was safe from any one overtaking him, as your not allowed to overtake on a yellow flag.

But Danny Smith dived up the inside of him leaving Tom very frustrated and having to take the finish flag in 4th.

Tom put in a complaint about the move but nothing was upheld, even though a 10 second penalty should have been added to Danny’s time. Maybe the Marshalls were busy and didn’t see it, same old same old “that’s Racing move on”

Race 2 (8 laps)

In the second race (still wet) Tom was moved up to 4th on the grid. He was so annoyed with what had happened (or what hadn’t happened) in the first race that he went into it with a “win it or bin it” attitude (he was going to win or crash trying, no holding back and suffer the cost later). He took the holeshot again and was leading for 6 laps without being overtaken once. But on the 7th lap there was another yellow flag and once again Tom was overtaken on a yellow, this time by Ross Humphries. Tom backed of a little bit because he knew that this time he would make sure something would happen for being overtaken on a yellow.

Tom crossed the line in second. When the time sheets went out, Ross had been given the 10-second penalty for overtaking on a yellow and the win went to Tom! He had never previously won a race outright on his Honda 125. He had won in his class (standard class) but had never won the whole race beating all the tuned bikes and the standard bikes! Tom had the fastest lap of the race as well with a 1:01.961 whereas all the other people where in the 1:02’s and 1:03’s or slower. So Dad Steve now knows he can win when given permission to ride with out having to worry about the cost of crash damage this is only going to hurt his pocket.

Watch out The Race Of the Year back at EMRA on 19th October.

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