Club racer report: 4

We’re covering the fortunes of club racer Nigel Baines as he competes in both the New Era and Wirral 100 championships. Having competed in the opening two rounds of the Wirral 100 races, he now switches to New Era at Snetterton.

“After a 5 Hour drive we arrived at the circuit at 20:45 and it was just getting dark. Any hopes of walking the track were gone, so the first time I would see the circuit would be in morning Qualifying. That gave me 10 minutes to try and learn the track and set a respectable time to give me a decent grid position! Qualifying was dry and after giving myself two laps to scrub the new tyres in, I tried to push as much as I could. 7 laps later and the chequered flag came out and I wasn’t too confident of qualifying up on the front two rows. I had set myself a target of a 1m 20s for my first outing and was pleased to see I’d managed a 1m 18.9s lap on lap 7. I was even more surprised to see me qualify 2nd behind last years Champion, Richie Welsh.

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Unfortunately this was the last time I rode my No.1 bike as the clouds thickened and the rain began to fall. By the time race 1 arrived the track was very damp and very greasy as the Powerbikes had found out with several red flag incidents. I chose to ride the Wet bike, which with it’s slight lack of power was going to cause me to struggle at a place like Snetterton, but we’d see how it went. The race was awash with fallers and by lap 3 I was battling for 5th when all of a sudden I found myself stuck in 3rd gear. The toe selector had worked loose and fell off which meant I had to do the last 5 laps in 3rd, but as so many of the front runners had fallen off, I kept going to find that I’d finished 8th at the chequered flag. The track conditions were tough to say the least and this caused our second race to be delayed until Sunday morning.
We woke on Sunday morning to the site of puddles around the caravan and the day wasn’t looking promising. At least the track was completely wet this time which would give us an even amount of grip everywhere. Got demoted back to 6th fairly early by a lot of experienced riders and found myself battling with Richie Welsh who was trying to make up for falling in race 1 on Saturday. From lap 3 to 6 I just couldn’t pass Richie as his bike was quick enough to pull out a margin down each straight leaving me too far back to pass in the breaking areas. I eventually passed him at the beginning of lap 7 round the outside at turn 1 and immediately put a gap on him. However, the time I had lost behind Richie (2 seconds a lap), had allowed race 1 winner Nick Chadwick to close on me and he passed me down the Revett Straight like I was standing still on the last lap giving me a 6th place finish. I was quite happy with this and knew I could go faster next time out.

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With the track still completely wet, I was actually quite looking forward to this one. After a good start I slotted in behind Richie Welsh again, only to have Nick Chadwick pass me down the Revett Straight on lap 1 before he then got passed Richie. This time I was able to overtake Richie early on, up the inside to the fast right hander before the chicane leading onto the start/finish straight, at the end of the first lap. I got my head down but was making no impression on the leader, before realising I had company behind from the race 2 winner, Mick Gooding. He showed his wheel to me at the end of the Revett straight on lap 3, but I held him off, before he eventually passed me down the straight on lap 5. At the end of the 6th lap I took a look behind to see a clear gap back to 4th and decided to conserve my 3rd position which I held to the flag. I was chuffed to bits with this result, giving me a trophy in my first meeting with New Era Superclub, on my first visit to Snetterton.
The fourth and final race of the weekend was to prove to be my worst one. By now the track had started to dry a bit and was only damp, which are my worst conditions to race in. The race started o.k, but I was soon in a 5 way battle for 5th place, with me unfortunately in 9th and trying to find the grip that was obviously out there. I struggled on, but after having a slide exiting the right hander after the Revett straight, I decided to take what I’d got and get the bike home in one piece. Crossed the line in 9th and felt a bit deflated with my performance after my podium finish from Race 3. I felt that if it was still fully wet I could have pushed harder, but in the damp conditions I had no confidence and didn’t lap any faster than I had done in the full wet.
I left the meeting feeling quite positive about things and sitting 5th in the Championship on 41 points wasn’t too bad. A new track in difficult conditions made it a tough weekend, so roll on Oulton Park on May 20th where hopefully the sun will be shining! Fingers Crossed…”