4th cat race MK bowl – 24/05/2015
Ant McCoy tried his hand at the Milton Keynes bowl on Sunday. Report below.
Ended up signing up for this race in error – thinking it was at Hillingdon! The promotor is running a series, one of which is infact at Hillingdown, which is the nearest circuit to me. MK is a long way from South London…
When I couldn’t get in touch with the organiser to get a refund/withdrawl I decided I was going to drive up and try it anyway, as the circuit might suit me (fastish and flatish). There were 20-odd signed up online, so maybe a reasonable chance of actually picking up some points?
Ended up being just under 30 riders in our 4th Cat race and we were set off 30 seconds behind the larger group of 3rd Cats. There were a couple of clubs there with 3 or 4 riders who were doing most of the work at the front and the rest of us were happy to sit in and let them get on with it.
After about 10 – 12 laps and a couple of digs from the guys at the front, we had split and I had made it into the front bunch of about 15 riders. Another lap or 2 and two guys from the same team both attacked, with another from their team being at the front of the bunch – probably trying to slow it down. Nice move…
Except it didn’t work out that way. We had caught the main bunch of the 3rd Cat race and couldn’t get past them. This made things interesting, as the Commisaire had been very clear the the start, that anybody from the 4th who caught the 3rds should definitely not sit in with that group and he would instruct them to move over and let us pass, if we happened to catch any back markers. I don’t think he anticipated we might catch the entire bunch though. 2 laps of confusion ensured then he made the call for us to hang back and give them a good 20 seconds gap before we could press on again. Effectively neutralising our race and this didn’t go down well with some of the guys who had been working hard on the front to thin out the field. Not to mention the 2 teammates who had gone up the road. Nevermind…
A few more laps and we got the signal for the last 5 laps. By this time I had managed to get up to around 10th wheel and was feeling ok.
4 to go and I found myself on the front, grrr.
3 laps to go and I was on the front again. What a mug.
Soft pedalled a bit at 2 to go and got back into around p12 at the bell. Now the MK Bowl circuit isn’t exactly a bowl, and there are a couple of quite tight bends and one really trecherous chicane, with a nice kerb, gravel and sharp stones to plow into, if you overcook it (saw at least one 3rd Cat do this on the day). I always get a bit nervous at high speed if I’m in a group of unknowns and couldn’t help but stay out of harms way in the final lap. Some riders simply can’t corner without looking like they’re going to stack it.
The finishing straight is more of a curve that isn’t exactly a climb but enough of a drag to be unfavourable to a fat chopper. So I knew I wasn’t going to get in the points by the start of it. If I went flat out, may have moved up a couple of places to 12th – 13th but it wouldn’t gain me anything, so I sat up a bit and stayed well left on the circuit, rolling over at the back of the first bunch, or a couple of seconds behind them. The rest came in 2 minutes back, so I ended up coming in something like 16th.
A long way to drive for nil points but at least I had the M1, A406 and London traffic to look forward to for the next 2 hours 🙄
The search for points continues…
