It's safe to say the season got off to a very eventful start for the team this year! Joel and the team arrived and set up camp on Friday, looking forward to Saturday's first session. Unfortunately in only the third lap of that session Joel was brought down by another rider at speed, causing considerable damage to the bike. Brushed off and bike readied, Joel was focused on getting out for the second session. Everything was going great in the session, but whilst Joel was out in 1st Qualifying the bike suddenly seized going down the back straight at around 100mph and hurled Joel over the top. At the time it happened we didn't know that it had actually seized and Joel thought the rear wheel had locked up, upon inspection we couldn't find anything wrong on the surface - infact it was only when one of the bigger team mechanics came and had a chat with Joel that they suggested about the engine seizure. Sure enough when we stripped it down we found the problem, so now we had to beg steal and borrow to ready the bike to get him out again 3hrs later...which we did!

Unfortunately after the tragic days before he didn't qualify, but he did extremely well just to get out again and complete the half hour session, he was only a second off the qualifying time as it turned out but come Monday morning Joel could hardly walk let alone ride a motor bike at over 100mph.

As a result we are going to miss the thruxton meeting this weekend because Joel is simply too sore, battered and bruised! Meanwhile we need to get a lot of parts together and ready the bike for the next event in 2 weeks time at Oulton Park, and then the following weekend at Silverstone.