The Biker Place

A season update from Josh Day who will be competing in the National Junior Superstock championship this year.

The first meeting of the year at Pembrey with NG Racing was a very wet and windy occasion with rain and strong winds all day on Saturday.

Even the tricky conditions couldn’t knock my confidence and I was still up for it and raring to go. The morning qualifier race saw me start 5th, after a great start I took the lead into the first corner and had a faultless ride eventually pulling out over a 6 second gap on the second place rider to the finish.

This result put me on pole position for the final which is the points scoring race. Another great start kept me in the lead but I was in a race long battle with two other riders the 3 of us pulled over 10 seconds away from the rest of the field. It was definitely the best ride of my short racing career and I held the lead all the way to the chequered flag to win the first race of the year.

Sunday morning came and bought the sun with it. Although it was still fairly cold so the track conditions were still wet but drying slowly. The qualifier race was an exact replay of Saturday with me winning by a gap of over 5 seconds putting me on pole position again for the final. With the track now completely dry I knew the 600 open final was going to be even tougher than the previous day. I held the lead into the first corner and managed to stay there until we started catching backmarkers. Unfortunately I was forced to slow into the hairpin allowing the 2nd placed man through. He then held me off to the line but I was happy with 2nd position as I could have done nothing more in the race.

The next stop in our busy early season schedule was Brands Hatch GP Circuit on the 4th / 5th / 6th April for the first round of the National Superstock 600 series. Before even turning a wheel the pressure was on as there were 53 bikes entered for this round and only 40 allowed on the grid so 13 would be going home no matter what.

Having never been around the circuit I got off to a slow start in Free Practice as the bike was totally wrong. But being only a 30 minute session it wasn’t worth coming in so I just stuck at it and got myself familiar with the circuit. After a discussion with the team before the first qualifying session we made some changes with gearing and we got it just about right for the way I ride.

In the session I knocked 2 seconds off my earlier lap time which put me 24th out of 53 riders although the whole field was so close because that time was not even 1 second off of 8th position.

After a successful first day I was looking forward to Saturday and the 2nd qualifying session feeling confident that I could climb the standings once again but unfortunately just as we were going out for the session the heavens opened and that was that. Nobody was going to improve in the wet so I stayed in and was happy with 24th at my first ever British championship event.

The weather took an even worse turn on Sunday as we were greeted early on by several inches of snow! The raceday has been postponed until Sunday May 11th so im looking forward to that.

The next round of the National Superstock 600 is at Thruxton our local circuit on 18th/19th/20th of April so anybody who could be there to cheer me on it would be a real boost.

A big thankyou again to everybody helping me this year.

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