Hottrax Anglesey Update: Fireball Racing made its debut at the Hottrax Race Club at the weekend. Anglesey provided its usual unpredictable weather with monsoon-like conditions on Saturday and a mini-heatwave on Sunday. Nevertheless, Fireball Racing was consistently at the front in every race over the weekend with a total of eleven trophies and five victories over the two days. Saturday The heavy rain gave the boys their first real wet experience of the year and following poor qualifying all round David, Matt and John had a lot to do. John excelled in the very tricky conditions and was involved in a huge battle all race long. A last ditch pass on a fellow zx7 rider on the final lap signalled a very good race and it wasnt until we got the result sheet that we realised John had taken his first victory after coming out from retirement. This was followed by another great second place in the afternoon race. Davids poor qualifying gave him and uphill task which was exacerbated by interchangeable conditions which favoured an alternative tire choice. Despite this, David managed to take a solid sixth place in race one. In the second race, he made the correct tire choice and took his first outright victory on the new Suzuki. Finishing one second ahead of British Superstock rider Jonathan Lodge. The race was run in very wet conditions and it was impressive riding from both riders who both started near the back of the grid. Matt struggled with mechanical issues in qualifying and had to start at the back of the grid in both races which hampered his progress throughout the day. However he dug deep and took two solid top ten results. Sunday The new day provided crystal clear skies and a new opportunity to put in a good qualifying performance. All three of the riders managed to improve on there qualifying from Saturday with David qualifying on pole in the powerbikes and matthew on the front row in the supersport race. John had another great day. This time enjoying the new zx7 in the dry conditions and setting his new pb at the anglesey track. He was able to put in lap times that would be competitive in the modern bike classes. In the days two races he took another second place and a third place, making it four podiums from four races. Again enjoying race long battles with riders on similar machinery and of a similar age. Matt had a significantly better day in the dry conditions and took advantage of his front row start to take victory in the pre-national class and two podiums in the overall supersport class. He also took part in the pre-national Powerbike class taking victory in the second race and taking the fastest lap of the race. David had two competitive fourteen lap races in the Powerbike class. In the first race he took a dominant victory by five seconds ahead of Lodge and also took the fastest lap of the race. In the second race, David and Lodge traded blows lap after lap until Lodge was able to take advantage as David was caught behind a back marker on the penultimate lap. David managed to bridge the gap very quickly but ran out of laps as Lodge took the victory by 0.15 of a second. Once again David took the fastest lap of the race which rounded off a great days racing for all the boys. Overall, Fireball a Racing had an excellent first outing with Hottrax and are likely to be entering one of the endurance races in the future. Watch this space. The next outing for the team will be with Wirral 100 at Anglesey in June. If anyone has any photos from the weekend or would like further information on the teams progress please get in touch. Regards, Chris
Posted on: Wed, 28 May 2014 22:29:18 +0000