The 2010 Season starts

EMRA Rd1 - Another lap record...
So, here we go again...the long awaited new season is finally upon us. And it all started with the usual March pilgrimage to Mallory Park with EMRA. The weather was sunny, but that was slightly misleading as there was a real chill in the air. Winter is still here and conditions were rather testing. Leon was on his new R6 in the Buildbase Trophy. But, to make things interesting, Leon was also out to play with the 400s on his old ZXR machine - which Mike had been busy preparing for him all week back at BMC Racing HQ.

Qualifying went well. The 400s were out with the Formula 600s so it was a bit busy out on track. This, however, didn't stop Leon from putting in some blistering lap times and sticking his ZXR on pole. In the Buildbase Mallory Trophy Leon was again putting in some quality lap times and found himself ninth on the grid with a lap time of 55.781. In fact, ten riders were all in the 55's so that tells you how close the grid positions were.

And so to the racing, starting with the Formula 400s. There were rumours that we were running with the 600s. This wasn't the case, however, there did seem to be two separate classes though...the 'Leon Jeacock Class' and the 'Rest of Us Class'. This isn't mean't to show a lack of respect to the other riders...indeed the grid contained many quality riders. But it's more to show how Leon really dominated both races from start to finish.
Race one saw Leon leap straight out of the blocks and leave the rest of the chasing pack in his wake. A series of incredibly quick laps followed and saw Leon take a very comfortable victory, and lapped half of the field in the process.
Race two was very similar to race one, in fact. Leon again got an amazing start and was already way ahead by the end of lap one. He then, yet again, put in some blistering lap times to take the win by an incredible twenty three seconds. And in the process smashing his own lap record by about half a second with a time of 56.339!
Well done Leon, I don't know how you do it sometimes...and on a bike that was in bits only a week earlier! So big congrats to Mike too for preparing the ZXR so well.

The Buildbase Trophy was a highly competitive event indeed. Mark Littler was there, as usual, along with the likes of Luke Stapleford, James Hillier and Lee Jackson who were all there to fight their cause. But this time it was to be a fifteen lap single race event, rather than the short sprint qualifier and ten lap main event like last season. Leon got away well but soon found himself just outside the top ten for a while, but he found his rhythm and started picking off the riders ahead. He managed to fight his way up to an incredible eighth place at the finish, and only a fraction of a second behind Michael Niblett in seventh. And all this on his Superstock 600 R6! In fact, his fastest lap time of 54.523 was the fifth fastest of the field...heroic stuff indeed!So there you have it, a highly enjoyable, very successful start to the new season. We all cannot wait now to get down to Brands Hatch in a couple of weeks to do it all again...