BVC Friday NIght racing - 4th and 3rd

Improving ... slowly.

The B Group did three races: 5x5 Win and Out, 30 Lap Scratch and 5x7 Points.

Surprisingly I managed to snag a 4th in the Win and Out. I was just hanging out at the back of the pack when I saw 7 laps to go... was already nice and high on the blue, well rested and the pace was a not terribly fast 45kph... Just dug in, went over and dived down in my old favorite, corner 3... big gap, just cruised to the start finish... :-)

The 30 lap scratch race DID NOT go to plan... about half way in Dave Stevens and Bart Ludbrook ramped the pace way up and the entire field fragmented into multiple small groups... I had to work my way up bridging from small group to small group. At one point having to do a almost a minute at > 50kph to bridge a big gap. To no avail. I was lapped by Dave in the last lap. With the rest of the group he was with finishing with just behind me (almost but not quite a lap up.) So I was out of the top five entirely.

In the 5x7 Points I moved to the front to get the pole position out of the neutral lap. There was some quick laps and I (luckily) ended up behind Dave Stevens at the front of the pack. After about one lap at 45 Dave just put the hammer down and started to move away from us off the front. I followed and just barely manged to get on his wheel. We got a good initial gap which grew quickly as Dave lead me around for about four laps at > 50kph... By which time we had about a half lap, he took the first sprint with me as second.

Carried through to the next sprint, I manged to nip him at the line for that. About then we where joined by Bart Ludbrook. I thought he was a lapped rider so didn't worry about him. We kept going, trading places for the next two sprints. With a couple of laps to go Dave and Bart finally finished lapping the field.

Because I thought Bart was lapped I didn't think I needed to follow and just hung back, I would have a lock on second and nothing could get me first. Bad move. Bart had actually bridged up to us. So both of them got 20 points for lapping the field while I took only 5 for being first in the final sprint. If I had just followed into the field I would have taken second. Instead I ended up with third... Moral never assume you know what you know is correct ... this of course assumes I was not so utterly whacked by that time that I could have followed... of course I could have... :-)

At least I can look forward to is Dave and Bart getting some more B races under their belt so they can move up to the A's... clearly they are already strong enough.