Hi everyone, below is my race report from last weekend at Wroxton near Banbury, written by my "old man"!!!!
As part of Luke’s training plan he will be racing with the local Banbury MX Club during 2008 in order to help sharpen up his skills, this included the first meeting of 2008 for the Banbury Club.
The meeting certainly wasn’t a warm up as conditions were bitterly cold, although the track was in perfect condition and great for some high speed training. This was the first time we had been to Wroxton for over 6 years and the track had really changed thanks to the new club taking over, they made a fantastic job of the track.
Before practice we made some gearing changes due to the nature of the track, this would improve top speed of the bike. The day was not going to be easy as there were several other riders who compete at national level against Luke, it was going to be interesting as this is the first time that they have met since going up a class to the BW85cc group.
In practice Luke went out right at the back and within 2 laps had made huge progress even up to the few national riders who had entered the race meeting. The track was super fast, Luke really enjoyed himself.
In race 1 he got an awesome start pushing hard into the first corner to take the lead, after lap 1 he had moved ahead around 4 seconds and got his head down on pulling away even further, second and third place riders were pushing hard also but weren’t able to match Luke’s pace. This was a big change as the other national riders in the group used to run with Luke and tussel for placing, and the difference was amazing.
This enabled Luke to focus on his skills and speed as he pulled away to a 15 second lead and took the chequered flag.
In race 2 Luke got another holeshot and pushed hard to stay at the front, he had found some new lines at the top of the track which really allowed him to increase his corner speed, within a few laps his lead was over 15 seconds.
By this time the back markers started to play a part but Luke planned ahead to make the passes in the right place and make sure he didn’t make any mistakes. Towards the end of the race Luke had increased the gap to over ½ lap as he took the chequered flag once again.
Due to a few red flagged races during the morning there were only 2 blocks of racing during the day.
Summary
A great weekend for Luke, some excellent training on Saturday and 1st overall on Sunday, excellent progress at the start of the season and some confident races which should hopefully assist Luke for the Supercross final towards the end of February. Merv Anstie is back in the UK for a week so Luke will be spending some time with him before he jets back to the USA, we are planning on racing at Wroxton again before the Supercross hopefully on the new 2008 bike.
We were extremely pleased with Luke’s speed, hopefully this can continue throughout the year.
Thanks also must go to Banbury MX Club for sponsoring Luke throughout the 2008 season.
Matt Norris
It was a good weekend, we had been to Winterbourne Gunner on Saturday getting the bike set up for Sunday, it was awesome.
Luke #73
