God, how is it the end of the season already? It feels like only yesterday I was flying out to sunny Spain to get some testing in the bag, yet here I am, writing up about the last round of the season. And what a season it has been; after all the ups and downs, bad luck and struggles, we were holding third in the championship – and it was looking good.
The squad was back together as well; Bruce, Boothy and I were the team, and after a decent quali, we lined up for the very last race of the year. There was one other team we had to beat to get third, and after Boothy took the start, they were a few places ahead of us as we sat in fifth. It was dry but cold, and none of us really had any proper dry track time to acclimatise, but as Boothy pitted and Bruce went out, we dropped back a few places. It was looking like all hope was lost for third in the championship, so on my stint I went out and hit as hard as I could – only to end up in the gravel, thanks to the gear selector being slightly loose – my first little off on the Gixxer, at the last race of the year. Great.
Alas, before I’d even processed things I was up and attempting to run back with my transponder – my D-AIR had done a mega job at saving my top half, but my god it’s hard running in full leathers that are inflated. Even so, we managed to get back out with just over an hour-and-abit to go in P11. But the biggest surprise was, in all the carnage, the team we was racing against had dropped down even further. All we had to do was bring it home!