Neave twins
You may have read last month that I had an off at Mallory and broke my wrist; well my twin brother Tom took care of our column last month and he doesn’t know what he is talking about… it was at Oulton Park. It was a compound fracture to my radius but it was only a small one so we didn’t worry too much about it. They stuck a cast on it for me but we had to whip it off with the angle grinder because I couldn’t fit my race gloves over the top – well, we had got the Boxing Social/Nigel Racing Yamaha R6 all ready for the British Supersport Championship so I didn’t fancy missing round one.
Unlike Tom, who is still complaining about his poorly shoulder after having surgery on it last month, I didn’t miss round one. Other than a test day at Cadwell I didn’t really get much track time pre-season so I knew the first round, at Donington, was going to be a bit of a struggle. Friday was a write-off, we had problems with the fuelling which meant we couldn’t get the rest of the setup sorted, and I ended up qualifying 24th.
I felt like I had nothing to lose leading up to the first race on Sunday. There was a bit of rain when we were on the grid and a few teams switched to wet tyres, but we opted to stay with drys. And I’m glad we did, as the drizzle eased off and I managed to get up to 10th by the end of the race. Monday’s race was an actual wet race. I pushed on and managed to finish ninth, with the seventh fastest lap of the race, so I was mega happy.
Round two was at Brands Hatch and I was desperate for another strong performance. I struggled a bit with setup in qualifying, ended up 20th on the grid and only managed to make one place up in Race 1, to finish 19th. I knew I had the pace to easily run with the lads in the top 15 but was struggling to pass. Race 2 was much better; I fluffed the start but there was an incident that caused a restart which played in my favour. I’d barged my way through to 11th by the time the chequered flag came out so came away with some points and 13th in the championship.
It’s been a brilliant start to the season and Nigel (the Team Boss and Top Dog), the team and I are all really happy. Even Tom’s managed to crack a smile and congratulate us, although he didn’t hasn’t said much else about it! I think the poor lad had to fight the tears back when the first Superstock 1000 race started and he was stood watching in pitlane, with his arm still in a sling and his Gixer parked up at home. Bless him.
Tom’s shoulder’s still pretty sore; he said he is going to try and do some laps at the next BSB test and make a decision then as to whether he is fit to ride, but I’ll let Tom tell you more about that next month. I do feel sorry for him because I know how crap it is not riding, but then again he should be more careful, shouldn’t he?
Anyway I’m really looking forward to getting back out on the R6 at Oulton Park. I’m hoping for some more top ten finishes, but our ultimate goal is to get as near to the front as possible and finish inside the top six. It might not come at the next round, or even the one after that but I know we can be there eventually so I’ll be giving it everything I’ve got when the lights go out at Oulton.