Jeremy Holmes - Race report, NZ SBK Champs, Rnd1

Qualifying didn’t go as planned for me. We had a good setup but I struggled to find a good pace and ended up 12^th on the grid. The positive thing was from my point of view was that positions 5^th to 13^th were covered by around a second and I knew I always perform better a race, so I was confident of a decent result.

From 12^th on the grid into the first corner I had worked my way up to 10^th position, after working through Ruapuna’s busy infield and into lap 2, I had worked my way up to 8^th position with another group of riders in sight. I set after them only to find that I started to get terrible arm pump. What seemed like a fairly easy pace to maintain suddenly became very difficult. I backed off a little to see if it would come right and must have relaxed a bit as I actually started to pull the group back with out trying too hard. I managed to get by another rider and hold 7^th place to the flag.

Race 2 was in similar fashion, from 12^th into turn one I exited 10^th again, I managed another pass through the infield, however I was again hit with pain through my arms, back and shoulders and couldn’t run the pace I knew I could do. Fortunately for me (but unfortunately for the other riders) this race turned into a war of attrition and I inherited a couple of positions through crashes and a mechanical DNF. My final position was 6^th place.

Overall for the meeting we finished up in 6^th place in the Championship which is pretty good considering how I felt on the bike. I have had a couple of days rest and recovery and am looking forward to heading to Timaru this weekend where round 2 of the national series will be held at the Levels circuit. Last year we ran very well at levels and I managed to bag my very first podium finish in the 600 class, a feat that I am hoping to mirror this coming weekend.

Hopefully we will see you there!