I've said it before, but I'm not that much of a fan Mallory Park.  My feelings about the place weren't helped by the fact that it was whilst running in the final race of the day during my last visit to the Leicestershire circuit (with Derby Phoenix in August) when I last fell off, spoiling my two year plus crash free record (well crash free racing anyway.....the odd practice session might not have run quite so well)!  That said, I usually do quite well at Mallory and during that last meeting, I did rack up three wins (1 Allcomers and both F600 races) and set the fastest lap of the day, so it can't be that bad for me. 

The intention behind this New Era meeting was purely a gap filler between the two Derby Phoenix meetings at Oulton the week before and Cadwell, which would have otherwise been a three week gap between racing.  It seemed a good idea at the start of the year when I filled the entry form in and knowing how much the Summer break had caused me to lose pace, I was looking forward to getting on and racing, particularly as the weather was superb the whole weekend and in total contrast to the monsoon the previous weekend at Oulton.

Qualifying

Being New Era, you have a timed practice session to determine your grid spot, although with under 10 minutes to actually set a quick lap it does mean you have to get out and lap quickly!  This is exactly what I did do, pushing my way up to near the front in the holding area and then getting out amongst the quick guys meant that we had a charge for a few laps before we caught slower riders.  I had my laptimer on to see how I was doing and had said to myself that as soon as I had got sub 56 seconds I would come in.  It took me until lap five to do this, but then it was a high 55 so I stayed out and next lap got 55.68, which I knew would be good enough for front row. As it turned out, I actually got pole and was over half a second quicker than Ben Billard in second!

Race 1

I wasn't so much that I got away well as everybody else got a bad start too, leaving me to go straight into the lead as we entered Gerrards for the first time.  I led the first lap ok and was just trying to focus on putting some quick lap times in, but somehow it wasn't happening and I was making mistakes in a few places here and there.  This showed itself when on lap three, Tye Kinton came past me on the way into Gerrards and held me all the way around the long turn, but I could see that I had a better exit speed so I lined him up for a pass into Edwinas and took him on the brakes to get the lead back again.  I then gave myself a bit of a talking to and put my head down to build up a couple of seconds lead, although I still made a few mistakes and was sliding around a lot too on what seemed a very slippy track surface. Things were going ok and I'd built up a couple of seconds lead so could have afforded to back off slightly on the last lap, but I didn't and nearly paid the penalty as I outbraked myself and ended up going straight across the grass at Edwinas.  Luckily, I had enough lead so that when I rejoined the track I was still in front, but Tye was now right with me.  To make matters worse, I outbraked myself again at the Hairpin and ran slightly wide, but it seems that I took Tye with me because he couldn't make a move.  It was a close run thing at the end though and I won the race by just 0.07 of a second!