Tom Weeden BSB Round 2 Thruxton Triumph Triple Challenge

Only four days after the first round at Brands Hatch, Tom Weeden was back in action at the Thruxton circuit for round two of his Triumph Triple Challenge campaign. After walking away from the first round in 3rd position overall in the championship, Weeden was eager to challenge for a podium position this time out.

Held wearer Tom Weeden- currently 5th in the Triumph Triple Challenge standings

In first practice he took it relatively steady to learn the track at first, and then started to concentrate on suspension set up for the bumpy Thruxton circuit. Weeden ended the first session in only 14th position but was confident the set up changes he had worked on would allow him to go much faster in the second practice session. Weeden went much quicker in the second session and ended up posting the 5th quickest time after spending most of the session in 3rd place.

The rain came down for the Qualifying session on Saturday. Weeden went out feeling fairly confident on the wet track. He immediately found that the track was fairly grippy and that he could push much harder than was possible at Brands Hatch the weekend before.  In a constantly changing grid Tom put his fastest lap time of the session in on his final lap in order to give Weeden his first ever Triumph Triple Challenge pole position.

Weeden felt confident he could push at the front for race 1 from pole position on the now dry track. Unfortunately Tom uncharacteristically got off to a poor start and was down into 4th position by the first corner. He moved up into 3rd on lap 2 before dropping back into 4th on lap 3 in which Atkinson overtook Weeden into Cobb making contact with Tom as he was fully leant over. Luckily he kept in control and stayed on the bike but slipped back into 5th. The race was then stopped early with 1 lap to go due to a crash from a rider in front of Tom which promoted him up to 4th position.  Tom posted the 5th quickest lap of the race and as such would start from 5th position for race 2.

Tom opted for a gamble for race two in order to find him a bit of extra rear grip. He went for both a gearing and a suspension change however soon found out that it had not paid off once the race was underway. Weeden didn’t get the start he was hoping for and dropped down to 6th position at the end of lap 1. He withheld the efforts of the riders behind him up as he struggled with the new set up but tried to pull a gap on the pack behind him. Unfortunately the suspension gamble had really affected the bike and he suffered with grip during the later part of the race causing Weeden to drop back to 7th on lap 8. 

Unfortunately he could not keep with the pace of 6th position man Hutchins but Tom managed to hold off the riders behind him to cross the line in 7th place after a difficult ride.

This leaves Tom in 5th place in the championship now due to a change in the scoring system; however Tom is confident he will go well at the Oulton Park circuit for round 3 in 3 weeks time.

"Having suffered in the latter part of race 1 with loss of rear grip the team decided to gamble on some on some major changes for race 2 however these didn’t work as well as we had hoped, had we had a warm up session on Sunday morning this would have been apparent and we could have reverted to the previous settings, still lessons learned looking forward to Oulton.”

For more information on Tom Weeden please visit www.tomweeden.com

For more information on Held and to find your nearest UK stockist please visit www.held-uk.co.uk