SEPTEMBER 14th 2003 F'HOLES BISHOPSTONE

SOUL : Still trying to put any bad luck behind us, we were all hoping for a really positive day on Sunday. Soul was again really up for the big challenge of Foxholes Bishopstone. The Auto's use a slightly shortened version of the track, but even so fair play to the little dude as some parts of the track are still pretty daunting, yet he really enjoys the track. He gets more confident and faster with each race there, but even that wasn't enough to secure some solid points for the day.

Even in his practice he really pushed hard, and managed to surprise us all as he was a lot closer to race pace than he usually is in practice. He was really pumped for Race 1, but did himself no favours when he got caught up into the first corner. To give him gredit though he really rode his nuts to make up the time, but by lap 2 the lead group had cleared off. For Race 2 the plan was to get through the first corner in a better position and push hard like he did in the first race. That went out of the window when he took avoiding action to miss a faller right in front of him. Rather annoyingly that put him second to last again, but again to give him credit he did an excellent job of missing the person by centimetres. Amazingly he found it within himself to push even harder finishing two places ahead than Race1. In Race 3 it all came together, with a great start and he pushed his way through turn one and pushed and pushed and pushed. In my eyes he did the best overtaking manoeuvre ever on lap 2. There was three of them going into the corner, when the first rolled of and started to brake. The rider in front of Soul saw this and late braked and went for the overtake, until Soul came steaming through and out braked the pair of them, tipped it in then blasted out of the corner. Excellent!! I was jumping and screaming, it was just fantastic to watch. He really deserved the second place he'd been battling for, but he didn't deserve the crash he had just before the last lap. All that hard work went out of the window as 3 or 4 riders came past him whilst he was remounting. He tried to catch them, but one lap just wasn't enough to get his place back.

This was by far perhaps his best race of the year, he had more drive and determination and his race craft really shone through. It's just a really big shame that his results didn't reflect his effort on the track, but of course that seems to be a continuing story to the second half of this year. It seems that due to his power deficiency he has to push just that little bit harder which as we all know the closer you take it to the limit the more likely you are to crash. If we were a Moto GP team, then I guess we'd probably be the Factory Yamaha. Full of potential at the beginning of the year, but lagging behind in the engine department in comparison to the might of Honda. But each race we go to, we still put on a brave face, and never stop believing!

We were really proud with Soul as always, but more importantly he was really proud of himself. He knows how hard he worked out there, and he loved every minute of it.

OLD NEWS

JAN/FEB
 MARCH 2nd 2003 - MARTINSTOWN
MARCH 16th 2003-WINTERBOURNE STICKLAND
MARCH 30th 2003-MILBOURNE ST. ANDREW 
APRIL 13th 2003 - FOXHOLES BISHOPSTONE
 APRIL 27th 2003 - MARTINSTOWN
 MAY 13th 2003 - TRIGON
 MAY 25/26th 2003 - BERE REGIS
JUNE 8th 2003 - HENSTRIDGE
JULY 6th 2003 - MATCHAMS
JULY 20th 2003 - BERE REGIS
AUGUST 2nd/3rd 2003 - MARTINSTOWN
AUGUST 17th 2003 - HENSTRIDGE
AUGUST 31st 2003 - MATCHAMS
SEPTEMBER 14th 2003 F'HOLES BISHOPSTONE
SEPTEMBER 28th 2003 - LANGTON LONG

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