RUNNING AT THE FRONT
After four year break from motorcycle racing, Ritchie returned to Brands Hatch for the first round of the ThundersportGB, Golden Era Superbikes races last weekend.
It was goodto be back.
It was also nice to meet some of the other competitors too. John Dieterman, last year’s champion, stopped by to say hello, along with Richard Harrison and Richard Stubbs, also on a Kawaski 750.
Friday practice was good, as he soon got into his rhythm, gradually knocking seconds off his lap-times.
Follow Ritchie for a few laps of practice.
On the Saturday he qualified fastest in the SBK class riding his 1997 Kawasaki ZX7R 750 - on a very wet and cold circuit. Only the BMW RS 1000, with traction control in the GP1 class – running within the SBK race because of over subscription – pipped him to the number one position. It was a promising start for Ritchie, who has always been pretty hot on a cold wet track.
“When it started raining I knew I’d have a good chance against the more powerful bikes”, said Ritchie. ‘ We are still running a standard 750cc engine because my tuned engine wasn’t finished in time for this meeting. It sort of levelled things out a bit – you don’t necessarily need horsepower when it’s wet”.
Ritchie picks up a well earned trophy after Race-1
In Race-1 he finished a close second in a race that saw the top riders exchanging places throughout the 10 laps. Unfortunately, in Race-2, Ritchie was taken-out by a novice GP1 rider on a Fireblade, who tried to out-brake him at Druids.
‘I was lucky really’, said Ritchie, “when the guy hit me, I didn’t touch the ground, I just slid with my bike on to top of his. When the Marshall helped me up he said I was good to go again. I just got back on and finished for some points”
On Sunday the weather was still cold, but the circuit started to dry out; it was time to test the dry conditions for a change.
Not really knowing how well he would do against the tuned competition, Ritchie thought that if he finished top ten, he would be happy.
So you can imagine how thrilled we all were with his two podiums; finishing second in Race-3 and 3rd in Race-4. They were very exciting and close – providing damn good entertainment for the family, who all turned up to support him. It was just like watching an old Superbike Race.
It was great return to motorcycle racing for us with this good solid performance on an underpowered bike. It was also good to be running third in the Championship after Ritchie's superb efforts out on the the track too.
Posing in pit lane:Two more podiums on Sunday.
Big thanks to Kais Suspension for another fast turnaround; changing the shock spring in time and Cradley Kawasaki for parts and R&G Racing for super-fast delivery of a new crash protector.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be turning our attention to the new engine rebuild again, we won’t have it ready and run in for Donington Park - 27th-28th March – so we might struggle a bit – but we should have it bolted in for Snetterton…were going to need it there!
More soon
