Team Phoenix Racing

Race Report #1 - Zolder, 24th March

Race cancelled due to snow!

Race Report #2 - Croix, 22nd April

Another great result for Team Phoenix, we turned up at the French circuit of Croix en Ternois eager to get a result, the first race at Zolder 6 weeks earlier was canceled due to snow.so with everything to play for we got practice and Qualifying underway, we had a lot of things to iron out with the bike set up as we had fitted new Maxton suspension to set up so it suited all three riders, the other issue was Rob and Ian had never seen the circuit before, luckily our "Ace" was Marc Declerk, as a rider in the National Belgian Championship he was a Croix specialist, this showed in the last part of the race as you will read later, so on with our qualifying session, our first qualifying put us on pole position, we werer buzzing with the result, we made a few minor adjustments and Rob and Ian shared the final session and we just got put back into 2nd fastest by 2/10s of a second.

So on to race day we woke to a dull and misty day with light rain so all our set up was out of the window, we decided to hold on to make a decision to hold on till the last moment to make a decision on wet or dry tyres and a set up change, which paid off as by the start of the race it had dried out. So with all the pit crew Ortwin, Bruno, Alex, and Kris, finely tuned and ready we started the race with Rob first in the hot seat, due to Robs lack of time on the circuit he battled gamely with the leaders but dropped 20 odd seconds by the time we had the first rider change, still firmly in 2nd place 30 seconds ahead of 3rd place, the pitstop was slick as to be expected with the crew on top form we fuelled and was back out in under 20 seconds still in 2nd place, with Ian putting in some stunningly fast laps but the race was red flagged a few laps into his session, with everything sorted out we got back underway, I had to make a decision to bring Ian in a bit early to get our fast man on board for the last session, as it turned out was good for Ian as he had developed arm pump.

Marc was super fast and although we were still in 2nd place we were 71 seconds down Marc pulled back the leader by as much as 5 seconds a lap and with a super human effort Marc took us across the line only 4 seconds behind to finish in a fantastic 2nd place, one more lap would have seen us on the top step of the podium, "but that's racing" the whole team and supporters who turned up were over the moon, next race is in Zandvoort in Holland on 30/31st July. Hope to see you there. None of this would not be possible without the support of our sponsors,thanx to Stefan Debeerst, Weruwise Bexhill, Phoenix Motorcycles Bexhill,Jellyfish Design Hastings,and finally An Brysse our book keeper who controls our budget, thanx guys.