Minigp Round 5 at rowrah

[Nathan Westwood.......]

well off to Rowrah in Cumbria we went.

the weather forecasts for the next 3 days didn't look to good at all.
we awoke to an overcast track, but no rain yet, so out on the track we went. after a few laps Nathan came back in complaining of a skipping rear end. after a few adjustments to the compression and rebound on the rear shock, out he went again. at the end of the session Nathan came up pit lane with a big smile on his face........the bike is working great he said.
later that day the rain came down and boy did it come down........but Nathan persevered and made the most of the wet practice, after all the met office said we were in for a wet weekend.

Saturday morning, first practice session we're fastest once more.
qually 1 and 2 seen Nathan and the rest for the field go quicker but we managed to take pole for the 5th time this season with a 3 second gap to second.

Race 1 Saturday afternoon.
now since the track was a little damp for most of the days running, Nathan was running full wets until race one, his front wet had blistered and de-laminated....opps... so we had to go out on the harder dry tyres. Nathan was a little apprehensive about this as he hadn't used them that weekend, but after a little word he went off to the grid anyway.
the flag dropped he went from pole to 4th, over the rest of the lap, he than picked off the ones in front one by one and by the end of the lap Nathan had manged to make it to the front. using his head over the next 11 laps to bring the bike home in first.

Sunday.
again the weather was overcast but the sun did make an appearance now and then, so it looks as though we'd get a dry days racing, and we did.......lol
as we had cooked Nathan's wets the previous day, we took the opportunity to scrub in a new set just in case.

Race 1 want much the same as the previous race the day before with Nathan chalking up another win.

Race 2.
now then, this was going to be interesting, with the addition of our good friend Bradley Hughes being allowed to run his conti V3 gp50.
to cut a long story short,
Brad had a few gearbox problems with his Metrakit 70 and as he had his V3 with him, Fab agreed to let him run with the 50's but start from the back of the grid for a bit of fun.
now some may ask why at the back.
well the Metrakit and the V3 have the same size engine, but the V3 has digital ignition, bigger carb and produces about 40-50% more power, so a slight advantage to say the least.

so the flag drops and off they go, Nathan for once gets a good start, off into the lead he goes, brad gets off the line and flies straight into 4th ........over the next few laps, Nathan extends his lead while Brad carefully picks of the riders in front.
by lap 5 ish, brad gets up to second with Nathan about 7 seconds further down the road.
lap by lap Brad starts to wind Nathan in, by lap 9 brad in a about a second behind Nathan and the battle started, with brad hounding Nathan, (bearing in mind that Brad was racing for fun and not scoring points and the fact that I'm (Nathans dad) signing to Nathan to us his head) Nathan just went quicker and quicker finishing the race with a second to spare, he never really looked worried or out of shape with the more powerful bike chasing him down, so there we have it. another win taking the total to 14 in a row and i believe a new lap record in the last race.

what can i say........go Nathan go......lol

WELL DONE LITTLE MAN

john

[Bradley Hughes]

Well done M8, was great fun, see you at the next round.