Bad weather, stones, an oil leak and an electrical fault on the start line were not enough to stop Jenny Tinmouth at Silverstone, in the penultimate round of the British Superbike Championship last weekend, where she posted yet another personal best lap time in qualifying and then finished strongly in both races in 20th and 21st place respectively and all that despite starting from pit lane for the second race.
The team had a late start, because they gambled on the weekend dry weather forecast being correct, and so they missed a wet and slippery FP1, hence they didn’t start their work till FP2 where Jen basically gave the bike a general shakedown. It was FP3 when the times started to tumble with Jenny posting pb’s lap after lap and by qualifying she was lapping in the 2min 10’s which was nearly 3 seconds faster than last years pace. During the final minutes of qualifying Jenny lost the front end at Stowes so the session came to a premature end, with the team qualifying in 24th position.
Fortunately the damage was minimal and even despite a slight oil leak being found in the clutch casing during warm up everything was still ready in good time for the first race.
In Race 1 Jenny got a great start but during her first lap a wayward stone shattered the bike’s screen. Unperturbed she got her head down and with some consistent lap times finished in 20th place. More drama was to follow in the second race where the bike developed an electrical fault on the start line meaning Jen had to start from pitlane. Putting this setback to one side she admirably set about the task of reeling in the leaders and soon passed the first of the back markers. She was chasing hard and gaining on the next before running out of laps finishing in a creditable 21st place.
“Rider Jenny Tinmouth said; “This has been one of the best weekends for me, so far in BSB, with some great times in qualifying and some really good close racing especially in the second race. We have had our fair share of bad luck through the season but we have overcome it and put that behind us and we are really looking forward to the triple header at the final round at Brands Hatch.”
Crew Chief Steve Bradley said; “Jen’s lap times here surprised us all. I always knew she was capable of getting in to the 2 minute 10’s and to be nearly 3 seconds quicker than last year just shows how much she has come on. We had a few niggles with the bike over the weekend but they can easily be sorted out and we will refresh everything so we can have a good final round to finish the year off.”
Image by London Bikrs
