Bike Devil MV Agusta Team Blog: Oulton Park
Fair to say that after this weekend we have a little more work to do than the rest.
James Ellison joined the team this week who is no stranger to MV and Bike Devil having ridden for Bike Animal (Hydrex) Honda in 2008 where he won some races; with high hopes, we went to Oulton Park to improve on the job Gino did at Cadwell.
The team worked very well all weekend, and our new lorry driver settled in and was our star of the garage, Graham now joins the team for the rest of the year. Lots of chassis changes saw Ohlins very busy and meant the bike became James’ very quickly.
Top 8 pace in FP2 was what we were looking for, and he delivered all session, we did finish a little lower down, but that was because we didn’t throw another tyre at it, maybe we should of, as FP3 was a washout.
Qualifying was ok, and while we didn’t get in the top 3 or 4 rows we were hoping for, a good time saw us 15th on the grid, we felt we certainly could push on from there.
James had been having some issues with throttle feel, and this was costing us for sure, something that we needed to fix.
A bit of an up and down Race saw a red flag and restart which saw us start last after being punted off at turn one as the start of the race. So last to 13th and points being scored was a good result.
Overnight Saturday Motec worked on the issues we were having and found some solutions which improved the feel for warm up and James was finally at home on the big F4, High hopes to improve on Race 1’s finishing position saw us hope for a top 10 and then a good starting position for Race 3.
That wasn’t to be, 3 laps in and a big crash for James due to another rider being on the racing line on a blind crest meant the weekend came to an end… the investigation is ongoing.
Yes, James was ok, a few vital organs were a bit bruised and battered, the bike needs some love, and that is what we are on with now.
Assen is not far away, and we don’t want to miss our European road trip.
Dave Tyson
