First Response Finance

I set off for Silverstone at 6am on the Friday ready for a whole day testing. The weather was mixed with light showers and dry slightly sunny spells.

Before I arrived at Silverstone my suspension guy made a few adjustments to the handling on the bike and only 1 hour into testing I was already setting fast laps. The whole day ran without fault and my fastest lap was 1:07.55. This gave me massive confidence for the coming races as there were only three riders that went faster with the fastest rider setting a 1:06.89.

With the weather warm and dry on Saturday I decided to enter 2 more non-championship races which would give me 3 races on Saturday and 2 Triumph qualifying sessions. 10:15 am we set off for our first qualifier, the bike and the weather conditions are perfect.

9 minuets in to qualifying on my 6th lap I had just left a bend called (BECKETS) and had just joined the club straight when I hit a piece of debris on the track “As if I hadn't had enough bad luck already this season”. This gave the bike a highside which threw me over the front of the bike and I landed on my back at 110 mph. This was followed by the bike hitting me in the back and finally coming to a stop 80 yards from where the crash began.

My first thought was to get up and out of the way just in case another biker didn't see me down and cause another crash. I soon learnt I couldn't get up as I had winded my self and had a lot of pain in my left foot and left hand.

A track marshal came over and told me to stay down as they've stopped the session and the ambulance is on its way. After being strapped to a stretcher with a neck brace on I was rushed to the medical centre. The medics went through all their checks, and after cleaning a cut to my left hand deemed me fit to race with just bruising.

Due to the crash and having to repair the bike I had to miss my second qualifier and the first non-championship race. I lined up on the grid for the second non-championship race, starting from last on the grid in 26th. Still in massive pain I managed to finish in 12th position.

I had 1 hour to go before my first Triumph race. Even with taking pain killers that looked fit to knock out a horse, my hand, foot, and ribs were still aching. In order to not bend my ring and small finger on my left hand, Me and Vicky (My Girlfriend) came up with an idea, we decided to cut a Tesco Club card in half and duck tape it to my fingers as a splint!

I set off on my first lap and was struggling to operate the clutch properly due to my hand so I ended the race in 21st position out of 29 finishers.

Sunday morning I woke up to find my hand and foot had swollen like the Nutty Professors so I went to the Medical centre at the track for some pain killers and an ice pack. I was then told by the doctor that they wouldn't let me race until I had an X-Ray and they knew there was nothing wrong. So off to Northampton General Hospital I went thinking everything will be fine, only to be told my hand was broke in three places. This ended my weekend short!

I have since been back to the hospital with rib pain and have found out that I have also broken rib!!!

Luckily the next round is in 4 weeks back at Cadwell Park so it will give my hand plenty of time to mend.