Well the 2005 Season was an interesting, lots of up and downs, a couple of small mechanical problems that lost a couple of wins ( fuel pressure regulator failure and a distributor problem). But a fantastic year. A good fight with Marc Hockin in the Griff 500 all season culminating in a last race fight for the class win.
Everything seemed to be going to plan for that last race, and having lead the class all season we were in a good position, however we still needed to finish ahead of Marc.
Qualifying went well getting class pole with only the Thorpedo in front of us, and marc behind.
As the light swent out i got a good start and boxed Marc in behind the Thorpedo. Going round Gerrards for the first time i gambled on the grip on the outside and powered around to outright lead. Comming into the hairpin for the first time was a bit hairy as the brake bias adjuster had moved somehow, putting all the brakes on the rear.. I held Steve off only to see the red flags onthe start finish straight.
Cliff Jobson had rolled comming out of Gerrards and they needed to sweep the bits up. Cliff was ok though.
At the Restart I got another great start, straight into the lead. I held Steve of for about 4 laps untill he came thundering past on the straight with the help of a couple of extra 100 bhp !!!.
The hairpin was still difficult but I was nicley holding Marc behind me. Untill 3 laps from the end I started getting a huge miss-fire and had to let marc past and limp home in second. 2 tiny screws in the distributor had come loose letting the ingition timing advance at will.
So we lost the win and the class win and came home second in both.
We did make amends though at an extra round at snetterton, where we managed to beat Marc and get our own back, even after helping him rebuild his suspension after a start line crash in the aborted first race.
On to 2006
