Leon competed with ThundersportGB last Year and finished in 3rd place in the Junior Powerbike Championship on his AMS-Motorsport sponsored Kawasaki ZXR400, this is a well Organised Club with lots of track time, as well as being Televised on 'Motors TV' and is highly recommended.
This year Leon will be racing in the Superstock 600 Championship, and this is the first race report.
Friday 13th was testing and Qualifying for the 'Superpole' race to be held on the Saturday, there were some top named riders 'Dean Brown', 'John Simpson', Daniel Miles and Richard Wardle. Leon rode well and qualified in 3rd place on the grid, he held back a bit to try and save on tyre wear, after all it get's expensive when you have already bought 3 rears and 1 front tyre 2 weeks earlier!!
However Saturday came and Leon did well in the 'Superpole' race (18 laps), he Finished in 2nd place, 0.511 seconds behind John Simpson, with a fastest lap time of 55.599, and another Trophy in the cabinet ( well there everywhere now!).
Sunday is televised race day, with ThundersportGB, so Leon had to do well and get all his Sponsors on the TV!!, so the pressure was on.
Race 1
Leon got a good start but had company! Dean Brown was right behind him and at one stage got passed Leon, which Leon then claimed back at the hairpin, seconds later we saw Dean rolling down the start / finish straight, his gear change rod had come off!! and that left the door open for Leon to claim a 4.6 second Victory!!! and an Interview with the TV Camera's.
Race 2
Suspension changes were made after Leon said he was having trouble putting the power on out of the corners in the first race so he didn't have any track time to check the set-up, so this was always going to be a hard race.
Leon went into 3rd place from the off and started to drop back, but within 3 laps he was clawing the gap back, it was a brilliant race to watch (as you will see!) and was a photo finish over the line with just 0.3 of a second between all 3 top place riders, unfortunately Leon came 3rd and as quoted by the commentator on the day "it was a photo finish" 1000th of a second between him and 2nd place winner John Simpson with Dean Brown taking the overall win. This was an amazing race and afterwards Leon explained that it took him 3 laps to get used to the Suspension set-up, while the Rear was better it was pushing the front wide and was a fight to control it, with Dave Stewart saying "thought you was entering the new part of the track at one point".
Leon did extremely well and now leads the ThundersportGB Superstock 600 Championship, but this will change as the next meeting clashes with the EMRA Round. Leon still has quite a few rounds to get the points back and this will be his aim for the next meeting with Thundersport GB at Pembrey on the 8th, 9th and 10th May.
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