Motorcycling Harrison in impressive form at Castle Combe
TOM Harrison was delighted to finish second overall in the pre-injection 700 Championship following the latest race weekend at Castle Combe.
The local rider qualified fourth in his class and 15th on the grid for race one. Unfortunately, problems hearing the tannoy, meant Harrison and his Dad, who was also racing, got to the grid late and were told to start from the back!
Harrison said: “Starting from 42nd position, I knew I had my work cut out to get a decent result. I got stuck in straight away making some good passes as I was working my way through the grid.
“I got into a decent rhythm and with that got myself into third place after about five laps. Then the trouble with my arm pump started and I was really struggling to keep at a solid pace. I was soon overtaken for third place and I couldn’t quite keep up with Andrew to battle for the position. Luckily, I had a big gap behind me to fifth, so I decided to just bring it home.
“Thinking my lap times had dropped off due to struggling to get the bike under control in the braking, I was very surprised to see my fastest lap was on lap nine of the race. All in all a solid day’s racing.”
For race two on Sunday, Harrison started 15th on the grid.
He said: “I’ve figured out quickly how to get the 600 off the line well and that helped me big time. I was able to get into third place after avoiding a bike sliding in the track after two corners, and set about a nice rhythm to try to save my arms a little and work on my riding style again. I was keeping up with first and second for a good few laps and even took second place for a lap or
two, but unfortunately I still suffered a little with arm pump and couldn’t fight back when I was overtaken for second again. But I was super happy to bring the bike home in third.”
Harrison added: “Due to my finishing position in race two, I was able to start further up the grid in p12. I managed to get a great start and put myself into second place, I put the hammer down from the off to get down to some good race times.
“I straight away knew the tank grips were a massive help and allowed me to really push on five or six laps into the race to keep opening up the gap to third place.
“After a solid seven laps, I bought the bike home in second place with a 1.18.8 lap time. Very happy to have steadily got faster over the weekend and to come away with two trophies.
“With it being such a short championship I managed to finish second in the pre-injection 700 Championship. I’d have loved to do more races obviously, but in the current climate I’m just glad to have been able to race at all.
“None of this would have been possible without the help of everyone at JHS Racing and the team at WSC-Performance.”