Welcome to Croft…………
Magnificent weather greeted the team for their arrival at the North Yorkshire circuit. With Ed sidelined, the team welcomed the arrival of Danny Kent and his family. Danny supplied the Red Bull, young Kieran found the “wine gums” and we were set for the off. Danny, Tracey & Martyn would also like to extend their thanks to Brian McKenna for his kind support along with Julian at “Mini Moto Racing and M4 Karting.
FP1:
Spanish weather washed across the North East circuit, which probably made Danny feel at home. The mature 15 year old took his briefing from Bryan and Nick and set off on what was his first ride on the Aztec machine and first sight of the Croft track. A steady session was the order of the day and Danny and delivered a confident, assured performance shaking down the bike ready for session two. As free practice 1 closed the Aztec runner was in a comfortable 15th position.
FP2:
Free practice 2 saw some changes to the bike, mainly in suspension set up. It soon became apparent that the changes suited Danny’s riding style as lap after lap the Aztec machine climbed up the leader board. A total of 11 laps were completed with Danny posting his fastest on lap 9. The session finished with Danny in 6th place and under two seconds covering the top eight.
Q1:
With growing confidence and his performance in free practice, now was the time to put together a strong qualifying session. As the lap times began to come down Rob Guiver continued to head the pack, however there were now 14 machines covered by the two second blanket. Some of the championships familiar names were now engaged in the opening salvo of Q1 and mixing with them was the young man from Gloucestershire. With 14 laps completed, Danny posted an impressive P6 on lap 11, 0.10 of a second behind Conner Behan and only 0.602 off the provisional pole position of Rob Guiver.
Q2:
With a short gap between Q1 and Q2, the team had a strategy worked out for a refinement to the machines gearbox. As the second session got underway the 35 strong field was finding it hard to match the times of the first session, all except Danny. A further improvement of 0.40 over his Q1 time, saw him post the second fastest session time only bettered by a flying Martin Glossop. This gave a combined result and Fourth place on the front row for Danny and the Aztec machine. The day was brought to a perfect close with a visit from the “Eurosport team” of James Whitham and Jack Burnicle. It now appeared that the BSB TV audience would now get a sight of some “Aztec Gold”.
Warm up:
The day started with an early visit from Fred Clarke, the “voice” behind trackside commentary with an invitation for Danny to give the spectators an insight into his career and the Aztec team. With the interview complete, an uneventful warm up passed again with a solid run bedding in a new piston and some fresh rubber ready for the main event.
Race:
No sooner had the Superbikes had finished, than the 125’s made their way onto the grid for the sighting lap. The Aztec machine taking up the well earned 4th place on the front row. With the usual tension in pit lane, the lights turned Green and the pack set off down to Clervaux. Danny made a great start moving through to third just behind the KRP machine of Tim Hastings. With the first three safely through turn one and on into Hawthorne, things were looking good. As Danny exited the Chicane, disaster struck, a high side catapulted the Tetbury teenager off. With no where to go, Rob Guiver was also caught up in the accident.
This was indeed a sad end to what had been a great weekend. Danny was taken to the medical centre where his right arm was examined and confirmation that nothing was broken. A bruised and disconsolate Danny commented, “everything had gone well this weekend and I was sure I could have put the bike on the podium.” We will now have to wait until another day to taste the Champagne.
The team would like to thank all of our Technical Partners for there continued support and their valuable contributions. That podium is getting closer every meeting……...