James Doherty, Lydden Hill, June 7-8

Bike: Honda CBR600FS-1, Class: Supersport 600, Club: Bemsee, Contributor: Hamish Scadding

This weekend June 7-8 was another weekend for James Doherty competing in the King of Clubs Bemsee Supersport 600 at Lydden Hill.

In early races James struggled to get the best performance out of the bike, the stock CBR600FS-1 was victim of more powerful machinery on Lydden’s tight corners. The corners often lead on to steep hills, which makes strong acceleration vital.

But small adjustments to the suspension and tyre pressures improved things greatly and in afternoon sessions James’ lap-times were over 3 seconds faster than in the morning, allowing him to finish a strong 8th in the final Clubman 600 race.

Starting the last lap James caught on to the back of 6th and 7th placed competitors and attempted to ride round the outside of them both on the penultimate corner. He is confident that if the race distance hadn’t been shortened from 12 to 10 laps, he would have finished even higher.

" This weekend was a real boost in terms of confidence even though the results weren’t brilliant, I felt very much on form. The other supersports bikes could pull bike lengths on me out of the corners, they just had that extra punch my stock bike doesn’t have. I could make time on them on the brakes and through the middle of the turns and going into the devil’s elbow was where I made most of my overtaking. "

Overall he was very pleased with his performance over the weekend, scoring his personal fastest lap, 45.2 seconds, in the final race and is now looking forward to the next race at Snetterton on the July 19.

Thanks to Pauline at Lydden Hill Race circuit.

James is looking for sponsorship, for all enquiries please contact James on 07816 552820.