Ryan Dixon brings us up-to-date with his latest race report from the Pirelli National Superstock 600 Championship that headed to Oulton Park a week ago.

 

So, for round 2 of the championship, the roadshow travelled to the scenic Oulton Park in Cheshire, a track that unfortunately I haven’t had much experience of and one also renowned to be one of the most difficult tracks to learn and get right on the calendar! Knowing from the start it wasn’t going to be easy, I went with the view of doing the best I could and trying to get a solid finish behind me after the disappointment of Round 1 at Brands Hatch.

We rolled up late Thursday evening, ready to get set up Friday. Thanks must go to my uncle, Darren, for putting us up for the night as the van was full to the rafters with all the kit we have to take along to the races! Friday morning came around and we got to it, up bright and early to unload the van and set everything up and plenty of setting up there was to be done! But once it was all done, it was well worth it, we had a good spot in the paddock and the set up was looking good with the sponsor boards up in the awning too.

Saturday morning came around and the time for free practice came around. As usual, the plan was to use this session to try and get a good setting in the bike and get things feeling good and ready for qualifying later in the day. The session began and I used the first few minutes just to get into the swing of things and try and get back into the rhythm of how to ride the track.

As previously mentioned, the track is not the easiest to get right. It’s different to most tracks as you don’t attack it when you ride it, it’s more important to keep your corner speed up, have good corner exit speed and be fast and flowing. ‘Slow in, fast out’ is how people generally think it should be ridden. I was trying way too hard and tired myself out in the first half of free practice so I came in for a quick breather before going back out for the last 8 minutes.

The bike set up wasn’t great but we had an idea of some changes we needed to make to improve it for ‘Qualifying 1’ Saturday afternoon. We made some suspension adjustments and changes to the gearing as well as fitting a new set of tyres, ready for qualifying. I was confident I could go faster and it was time to try and do so.

The plan was similar to free practice, go out and get into it, come in for a quick rest and then go out and try and put in some fast times. The bike was much better, it was a lot easier to ride and the gearing was much closer to where it needed to be so we were heading in the right direction. After the first qualifying session I was 28^th with a best time of 1min 43.852 which I was pretty happy with as it was over 2 seconds faster than I had previously been around the Oulton Park circuit!

The Superstock 600 class was only scheduled to have one session on Sunday, which was ‘qualifying two’. The weather was slightly colder than Saturday and nobody was sure whether it was going to be wet or not but the rain held off so it was a new set of dry tyres and we also made a slight adjustment to the gearing again.

The session got underway and I was struggling to find a clear gap to get into a rhythm and get a good lap in. Not being a rider that can just take my brain out for a lap and bang an ultra-fast qualifying lap in, I need to find a gap on the track and be able to get into a flow and do four or five laps getting up to speed before I can start to do my ‘qualifying laps’. I pulled in eventually as I just wasn’t getting clear track with all the traffic on circuit. After a quick break and a new rear tyre fitted, I went out to try and improve on my time. I felt I was riding quite well and I thought the bike was marginally better and was therefore surprised to find that my best time was 0.3 of a second slower than in qualifying 1 and therefore had slipped to 30^th in the times charts which is where I would start Monday’s race! A little disappointed, we sat down and reviewed the overall times, best sector times and best speeds through the speed traps. I was slower through all three and thought maybe we had gone the wrong way with the gearing!

Monday morning we had an eight minute warm up to check everything was as it should be and good to go for the race later in the day. We reverted back to the gearing from qualifying one and made a slight adjustment to the suspension, all of which felt good in warm up and so that was what we decided we were going to go with in the race. 2.15 soon came around, the nerves were setting in but it was time. All of the riders set out on the sighting lap before forming up on the grid.

I was a long way back which I wasn’t too pleased with but only I could do anything about it and that was what I planned to do! I got a good start but as we arrived at turn one, I was dubious about going around the outside after what happened at Brands, however, they all queued up so much and were so slow at the first corner, I felt I had no option but to attempt it! Thankfully I managed to negotiate the corner without too much drama and headed on down to cascades a few places up from my start permission.

For the first eight laps or so, I had a pretty lonely race. I picked up a few places due to people going out of the race. Then a challenge came from behind, I was overtaken but immediately regained the position at the next corner before losing it again a couple of corners later. I chased the other rider hard and was running 20^th, then a couple of laps later he crashed right in front of me.

It was all I could do to not run him over as his slid down the track in front of me and then once I’d negotiated my way around him, his bike was on the inside of me, there was nothing I could do to avoid it and had to run of the track to avoid it. The rider behind me very nearly collected me, and also ran way off the track. Two other riders managed to pass me in the madness and I dropped back to 21^st.

I was running a slightly faster pace than the two that passed me and pushed to try and catch them again. I began to do so but then made a mistake and ran wide, losing time to them again. This was with a lap and a half to go and after that I decided to settle for 21^st and a finish than pushing on and risking a possible crash! I finished 21^st which I was not overjoyed with but I was happy enough to come away with a finish and also having made up 9 positions from my grid position.

The next round is at Donington Park on the weekend of 24^th & 25^th May with the world superbikes and we are looking forward to that and hopefully battling for a top 15 finish and may our first points of the season!