Oulton Report

Oulton Park Race Report 2018

Oulton Park was round two for the Selective Networks BMW team within the British Superstock 1000 championship.

The weather forecast looked good and consistence for the weekend so the whole team was looking forward to enjoying the weekend and even putting some shorts on!

FP1 was the first time out on track on Saturday at 11:30, we used a new front tyre but old rear tyres and I lapped faster than I did at the whole BSB Oulton Park test, a good start to the weekend! Ended the session in 12th place, 1.7 seconds from pole and 1.1 seconds from 3rd.

FP2 was a similar situation, finishing the session is 12th place and cutting the gap to pole to 1.2s seconds, I was having a few issues with the front end ‘feel’ of the bike so a few changes were made for qualifying.

Qualifying was the only session of the day for us on the Stock 1000 class on Sunday, the session started at 14:35, New tyres front and rear was in our Selective Networks BMW and this resulted in another good finishing position of 12th place with a lap time of 1`.38.4, the gap to pole position was 1.1 seconds, only 0.9 seconds from 2nd place.

After a de-brief from the qualifying session we decided to make a few changes to the front and rear as we still had issues with the front feel and felt that rear grip could also be improved.

Race day’s morning warm up was at 09:15 on the Bank holiday morning, I ended the session in 15th position and not happy with the front end changes, the rear felt better but the front was worse, a compromise was to be made for the race at 10:50.

The race started on time at 10:50 and I had a poor start, slipping back to 16th position by the end of lap 1. By lap 5 I had worked my way back up to 13th place with the top 10 in sight, unfortunately the quick shifter and auto blipper broke whilst on lap 5 and this resulted in dropped back through the field, with Oulton being a ‘busy’ track it made it difficult to maintain a good pace.

Luck wasn’t on our side during the race at Oulton but we showed we had the pace all weekend to be around the top 10 as we feel we should be.

We now have a 5 week break before the next BSB race weekend, we are hoping to fix the quick shifter and attend the dyno or a track day in order to test everything before the next round at Snetterton.

We would like to thank all our sponsors and supporters for getting us onto the grid this season! Without them we would be there at all!

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