The Biker Place

British GP125 Championship Snetterton Round 6

Tom Weeden’s string of bad luck continued in round 6 of the British GP125 Championship at Snetterton. Bike problems throughout the weekend thwarted Tom’s chances of a good result.  During the first practice session, Tom experienced major trouble with the gearbox, and it was later found to be a result of a fault with the selector shaft in the gearbox, this meant he could only go 25^th quickest. The second session, however he was still struggling with the gearbox; but he did manage to go a second quicker to finish the session 17^th quickest. After further intensive investigation clutch damage (probably a result of engine failure at Knockhill) was found and rectified. He was feeling confident for the qualifying sessions on Saturday, he ran a piston in for the first few laps, but as Tom started his first flying lap the head bolts pulled their threads out of the barrel, in the process blowing the head gasket and cracking the cylinder head with 10minutes left of qualifying. This meant Tom would have to run his Standard barrel instead of his kit Seel barrel; not ideal on a track that is based around pure speed. He was down in 30^th position after the disappointing 1^st session; however Tom remained confident for the second session. Unfortunately the grid positions were declared after only one session when the day’s schedule was thrown into disarray after a section of the track was damaged. The officials and marshals made up an emergency repair to the track, which required a minor realignment of the track; this meant that the second session was cancelled because the re-profiling had created a technically different track and due to the loss of time in the schedule. As such Tom was forced to start from 30^th on the grid for the race. He made a good start in the race, however due to the lack of set up time with the standard barrel etc, the gearing was wrong and was revving out. The bike was severely underpowered; however Tom tried his hardest and eventually found himself in a battle for 16^th place with fellow Academy Cup rider Elliot Lodge. Tom was still experiencing trouble with the gearbox, and was becoming increasingly frustrated as he fought hard to catch up with Lodge only to lose the time gained when his gearbox kept malfunctioning. It was skipping gears occasionally and Tom lost a lot of time and speed when the bike missed out second gear and went straight from 1^st to 3^rd.  However he fought desperately to hang on to Lodge, and on the 2^nd to last lap Tom dived under him on the brakes going into the last chicane. However as he exited the corner and went to change from 1^st to 2^nd, the bike missed out 2^nd gear and went straight into 3^rd. He lost all his speed down the straight and from there on he was never quite close enough to move up to 16^th place. He crossed the line in 17^th, and 8^th in the Academy Cup. However, Tom’s fastest lap was faster than the next 3 riders in front of him. He remains in 6^th position overall in the Cup standings, 16 points behind championship leader Deane Brown. Next up is Brands Hatch GP on the 8^th of August, where Tom will be hoping to get on the podium for his home round.

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“We haven’t really had much luck this weekend, however at least we finished and have got some more points on the board. I was aiming for a top 10 finish before the start of the weekend, however the problems we’ve had with the gearbox and the fact that we were forced to run the Standard barrel, hampered my chances of getting a decent result, money for new parts is not left in the budget so how we move forward now is anyones guess”

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