ROUND 3 RACE REPORT: Knockhill

Having never ridden here, Friday was a day of learning. Apart from a few laps on a simulator I had no knowledge of the circuit at all and when I first got on it, it was a lot different. A very short circuit with lots of blind corners in the undulating first and second section. Expecting rain from Scotland the weekend was actually an absolute scorcher much to the dismay of the every pale coloured locals – LOL.

The main problem with the Junior Super Sport championship – such little time on track – you’ve got no chance of being able to get up to speed with just one 20 minute Free Practice and then straight into a 20 minute qualifying. Though each session I improved, FP saw me in P26 with a +1 minute lap time and qualifying, though was red flagged two times, messing up everyones times, I was into the 59’s gaining one place to P25 for the starting grid.

Saturday race 1, I was so far back in traffic I struggled to get passed, as the track doesn’t give you many overtaking opportunities so I had to slow down in the places I was fast due to other riders. But I was literally still learning the track and finished a disappointing P26.

Race 2 – I started back on P25 again and was confident with the opening laps, picking off a few of the riders in front of me moving up to P21, then due to an incident on track at turn 1, the safety car was brought out. I had never experienced the safety car out on track before, nor did some of my other competitors. The idea is to close the gap and everyone bunch up and close the gap to the front runners. Unfortunately not everyone got that memo and I ended up passing a riding on the straight, that was travelling at a much slower speed, was the only thing i could do avoiding going into the back of them. This unfortunately resulted in me dropping from my finished position of P20 to P23.

With the track time I had, though I didn’t set the world on fire, I improved every session, I was OK with getting my times down to 58 seconds dead. Still 1.4 seconds behind the fastest lap of the weekend, I think for the 80 minutes of track time I got it was an OK result. It’s not exactly a track thats on our doorstep to come and practice at so I think this is one I’m always going to be on the back foot with.