The Biker Place

Tom Weeden came to Thruxton with one aim in mind: to learn the track, as he had never been there before. Tom doesn’t race with NG normally but he needed to learn the track for the future and track time is tight at Thruxton.

He arrived late on Friday and had no chance to walk the track, leaving him with only a 10-minute session on Saturday morning to learn it. He went out in the dry morning session and attempted to learn the track; by the end of it he had learnt most of it but there were a couple of corners he still had to get his head around.

As Tom was on the start grid it started to spit, but this didn’t faze him, as he knew this wouldn’t affect the grip level much.

Tom got a great start from 8th on the grid and was 4th into the first corner. Tom overtook 3rd place and put in some quick laps, Jay Lewis and Corey Lewis were in front of him. At one point he was catching them but then they both picked up the pace and pulled away.

Tom managed to gap 4th place by quite a large margin and just cruised home in 3rd in class and 5th overall (they were racing at the same time as 400’s)

Not bad seeing as he had only had 10mins to learn the track.

For the second race the weather was worse and it was raining heavily and very windy.

Tom started from 5th on the grid, but didn’t get such a good start this time. He was quite far back going into the first corner. Tom started moving up the pack, twisting in and out of the 400s and fellow 125’s. But by the time he had overtook most of them the front pack had already gone, Tom did manage to catch Sam Burman and he got a good drive coming out of the last chicane and beat her on the line to finish 4th in the GP 125’s.

For extra track time Tom was entered into the Open 400 class. He was 21st on the grid for this race. He got a good start this time and went round the outside of quite a few people into the first few corners. On the second lap he hit a white line on the inside of the track, the bike slid but regripped and Tom managed to stay on.

Tom was pushing really hard and was up to 8th place and was catching a 125 in front of him. But then Tom got a bit overconfident and pushed it a bit too hard, in the wet and windy conditions. The front tyre gave way and Tom crashed at about 90mph.

The bike slid and cart wheeled to a standstill. Smashing the fairings, bending the sub frame, and breaking the front brake lever, throttle, handlebar etc, Whilst Tom slid and bounced to standstill on the run off grass.

Tom trudged to the marshal post picking up as much of the fairings and front mudguard as he could.

So after a great first race, Tom ended with a crash and a rather large bill! So hopefully it will be rebuilt in time for Donnington on the 18th followed by Mallory Race of the year on Sunday 19th.

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