Race Report: Buff Supermono Championship/Nitro Moto450 Snetterton Report - 1st/2nd/3rd May

A few notes from our trip to Snett:

The weather on Saturday was good; sunshine and clear skies with light winds. However, for Hugh and I qualifying was not good as the right hand footrest snapped a Sear on the out-lap. I did manage to complete a lap, but the repair took too long to see us back out on the circuit.

Everyone else did OK apart from Mark Hughes and Perry Goldstein, who crashed out, thankfully uninjured. Mark’s bike, Steve Burge’s Rotax, ended up destroying its engine – there really was nothing useful left to speak of – maybe the oil filler plug. Unfortunately, that was it for Mark, which given how far he has to travel to get to Snetterton, can’t have been all that much fun when compounded with the fact he had to telephone Steve to say that his bike had eaten itself.

Sunday dawned wet and windy, and 2nd qualifying was damp, so no one improved. The race went well and despite having only recently recovered from a dislocated shoulder, the 14 lap distance was no problem - fastest laps for me coming toward the end of the race rather than near the start as at Mallory, so no issue with fatigue. Mark Lawes took the win, although the Aprilia-mounted hot-shots were frighteningly fast, and it was good to see Jon Goode on the 2nd step of the podium after his fall at Snetterton at the end of ‘09.

Monday was pretty rubbish; weather was terrible with high winds and showers. The wind destroyed Hugh's awning while we were in the canteen getting a coffee to keep warm. Several other awnings broke free and one ended up on the circuit, stopping the sidecar race. Major incident on the last lap of 1st race was that one of the Aprilia riders, I think Will Hodgson, scythed passed Mark Lawes into Russells on the final lap, but the BMW outdragged the 450 up the hill to win my 6 thousandths of a second. They don’t get much closer than that. Race 2 started dry but a light shower hit the bombhole (although I did hear that hail actually fell?) and Mark Lawes (who had set off like a rocket, being ‘The Specialist’ ‘n all......) and the following 4 riders all fell on what they assumed was, and did look like, a dry track. Race was therefore stopped and then abandoned due to the late start and as a significant portion of the grid had broken machines. However, I’m pleased to report that no one was badly hurt. A t his point we packed up our ruined awning and left for home. Thankfully Hugh has managed to source some new tubing to fix the awning so it will live to fight another day; and somehow I managed to finish 3rd, so I picked up a trophy. Maybe not sure a bad weekend after all......:-)

Cheers

Andy