Tom Weeden was back in action last weekend at the Olivers Mount Cock o’ the North road races in Scarborough. After a successful week at the North West 200 back in May, Weeden couldn’t wait to get back on the bike and back to the Olivers Mount circuit. Unfortunately the meeting had to be reduced to one day due to an issue with the Scarborough council; despite this the team still made the long journey up in order to get some track time before the Manx GP in August.
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| Tom Weeden: 3rd behind Lee Johnston and Dean Harrison |
As forecasted the rain died down after an hour and Tom was out for the 3 laps of practice he would get to reacquaint himself with both the bike and the track before qualifying. Weeden took it easy in the wet conditions, short shifting and not taking any risks and was pleasantly surprised to see himself 4th fastest on the timesheets.
The track had begun to dry for qualifying and it would all be down to tyre choice. The nature of the Olivers Mount circuit meant parts of the track would be dry but the parts under the trees would still be wet. After a lot of nail biting and deliberation on what tyres to go for, Tom decided to go for an intermediate in the front and a heavily worn wet rear that he didn’t mind destroying which had been saved for a moment exactly like this.
The call proved to be perfect with Tom taking two laps to get used to the tricky conditions without using up too much of the rear tyre on the dry parts. Then on the 4th and final lap Tom found himself a bit of space on track and put a quick lap in fast enough for 3rd position on the grid, 2.2 seconds faster than 4th position and only 1 second off of pole.
The track had mostly dried up for the first 600cc race, full dry tyres being the choice for all on the grid. Tom’s once trademark flying starts have been something he’s been missing this year so he was hoping to at least consolidate third position into turn 1 front the front row. Unfortunately this didn’t happen, Weeden dropt to 7th into turn 1 after getting beaten up a bit off the line. He moved into 6th halfway through the lap but the front pack had begun to pull away. At the end of the first lap the red flags came out due to an incident that needed clearing, giving Tom another chance to sort his start out.
The start was better in the rerun but still far from perfect, Weeden was in 6th but this time right on the tail of the chasing pack. On lap 2 he moved into 5th when a rider in front crashed causing Tom to take evasive action. The race continued and Weeden found himself behind Daley Mathison trying everything to find a way past. On the last lap Daley showed Tom half a gap at the end of the back straight and he didn’t need asking twice to come through into 4th. With half a lap to go Ivan Lintin had an off in front of Tom leaving him to take 3rd position.
This boded well for the remainder of the meeting in which Tom had one more 600 race and then the main Cock o’ the North race. Unfortunately though an incident in which a sidecar spilt oil over a large proportion of the track caused a lengthy delay. Despite even getting the fire brigade to come and clean the circuit it was deemed too unsafe to continue due to the amount of oil covering the circuit. On a road circuit with very limited run off rider safety has to paramount and we respect the unfortunate decision to have to call an early end to an already shortened meeting.
Looking at the positives Weeden can go to the Manx GP with himself and his bike in one piece and on the back of another great podium result at Olivers Mount.
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