Last weekend, 13th/14th April was Round 2 for Lamonde Racing's campaign in the 2024 Bemsee Championships. Matt(#9 Thunderbike Sport - Suzuki GSXR600) and Tom(#74 - Yamaha R6) were competing this weekend.
Practice was on Friday, with qualifying Saturday morning, Matt qualified 1st(1:02.617) and Tom qualified 4th(1:04.762), the weather soon turned against them, meaning both Saturday's races were wet. Both riders have spare wheels with wet tyres on, so changing over only takes a few minutes, wet tyres can be a bit of a gamble as they soon "go off" if the track starts to dry, or is not wet enough to keep them cool enough to last race distance.
Matt
Matt had not ridden at Pembrey before Friday's practice, so was finding his feet a little, bringing home a 3rd place, his first podium of the weekend.
Matt's second race, saw him bring home 2nd.
Moving on to Sunday, the weather had improved, the sun was out and with race confidence, Matt took off like a scalded cat in his first race, crossing the line a convincing 1st with a 14.5 second lead, bagging the class lap record with a lap of 1:01:956, beating the existing record by half a second.
Matt's second race was red-flagged on the first lap after he'd had a cracking start, luckily the rider was uninjured and the race was re-run after lunch for the full 12 laps, Matt brought home the win with a 7 second lead.
Tom
Tom's weekend was unfortunately plagued with bike issues, his bike seems to have some electrical gremlins which coupled with some suspension tweaks kept him off the pace a bit, bringing in a 9th in his first race on Saturday, and a 7th on his second race, following some tweaks.
Moving on to Sunday, and Tom's bike appeared to be running on 3 cylinders, as much investigation as was possible in the limited time was carried out, and he went out on circuit, the fault appeared to have cleared on the warm-up lap and Tom held 5th place for most of the race, slipping into 6th near the finish, only 2.5 seconds off a podium position.
Tom's last race of the weekend, his bike misbehaved the whole race, and he nursed it for a finish in 9th, disappointing result due to bike gremlins, however, a 9th is better than a DNF.
With the exception of Tom's bike woes, it was a great weekend, and a real team effort with team helpers updating and showing the pit board to update the riders and being on hand to take remove and replace tyre warmers and get the bikes on and off the paddock stands.
The next round will be at Snetterton on 4th/5th May 2024.