Bishopcourt - Easter Saturday

 Round 2 of the ISB started for me by heading to Bishopcourt on friday night, we decided to drive down get parked up and then head home for a good night sleep. The morning didn't start of as planned, the alarm clock was set for 6am, I got up early, went downstairs to get a cup of coffee to get me wakened up and realised that it was 6.45am, oooh dear considering I had to try and get Louise motivated to get ready quickly (not an easy task!!!!).

We arrived at Bishopscourt just after 8am and unloaded the van, we had missed the usual queue for scruntenering, then it was just a matter of getting a fresh set of tyre's put onto the R1.  

 Timed practice started with the R1, with it only being my 2nd time out on the bike things were going slowly and I realised I was off the pace, this was my first time out on full slicks and I was suprised by how well the bike handled and how much grip there was.  Unfortunately I didn't qualify for this race.  

 During timed practice for the lightweight supersport on my SV, while out on track it became clear that the bike was not holding as much grip on the front and it felt like I was going to come off at every corner, I finished the practice session in 3rd place and soon realised after coming into the paddock that there was infact a problem with my front tyre.

 My first race was the ISB non-qualifiers, I decided to use this as abit of a test, and changed afew things on the bike (which didn't work!!).   I am enjoying my first season on the R1, however this is proving to be harder than what I originally thought as the SV is 70BHP and the R1 is 175BHP (just abit of a difference!!!).

 I got of to a good start on the SV and lead for the first few laps until the race was stopped due to a red flag incident involving Alan Glasgow and Alan Brown, this meant that the race had to be restarted, I got off to another good start and lead for the remainder of the race to finish 1st.   The 2nd race went well also with the SV once again getting of the line well,and I was lucky enough to finish first again.    One of the strongest points on my SV is that if handle's really well and give's me confidence to push hard, if I could get the R1 to handle aswell I might be able to knock afew seconds off my lap times.

 Kirkistown - Easter Monday

 We decided to drive down to Kirkistown on Easter Sunday afternoon, with the caravan on tow.   Once we got settled in the bbq got lit up and it wasn't long before my Dad, Davey, Charlie and Louise decided that they wanted to hit Kirkistown's new bar, with me tagging along to babysit!!!   Louise and I decided to call it a night at 10.30am, however the rest had other ideas and decided to party until 3am.

 Monday went very much the same as Saturday, I was still a couple of seconds off on the R1, but was definitely starting to feel more confident.   I qualified once again in 3rd place on the SV, it was hard to get a quick lap as there was so many bikes on the track (which is good to see for the lightweight class).

 My first two race's were on the SV as I was unable to qualify on the R1.  Both race's were nearly identical to saturday's, with Alan Brown proving to be strong competition, I won both race's with Brown finishing 2nd in both race's also.

 I would like to thank everyone who help's me out, namely Neill Henderson, Charlie Jamison and my dad. The next time I will be out will be the Northwest and I'm looking forward to get the R1 lit up!!!

 Lee #22