He wrecked two bikes in practice and qualifying, but Teesside’s Colin Mooney bounced back to record four second places in the Nationwide Traffic Solution Thundersport 500 Senior Cup at Donington.
The Stockton rider and his pit team beat the clock to get on the grid with just half an hour to spare and went on to end the day still second to Rob Mawbey in the overall points table.
“I lost the front going into the Esses,” said Mooney of his first crash. “Although I was fine, the bike flipped and smashed itself to bits, the exhaust catching the floor when banked hard.
“We evaluated the damage and decided it was unfixable at the circuit - it was rendered scrap and to be used for spares.”
On his second bike, Mooney steadily increased the pace but the following day, after completing the required three laps, he lost the front on the high-speed Craner Curves.
“There is a saying that goes ‘racers have either crashed at Craner or they’re going to’,” said Mooney.
“Well, I’d just left the ‘going to club, very fast part of the circuit and down I went, and the bike flipped end over end.
“It was 10am Saturday morning, I was covered head to toe in mud, two scrap bikes and a scrap caravan (the axle had collapsed) - but hey, I’d qualified seventh in the group and 15th out of 80 riders!”
With two hours left he decided to go for broke.
“We stripped the two scrap bikes, begged, borrowed and bought the bits we couldn’t recover and built a bike that worked with half an hour to spare,” he explained.
Despite being on a hastily built bike, he enjoyed some good battles with Mawbey and finished runner-up in each of the four races.
“We recovered a massive haul of points in the Seniors from the face of disaster,” reflected Mooney.
The Seniors run alongside the main Thundersport 500 Championship racers and he finished 11th twice, 17th and 18th overall.
Yarm’s Kevin Liddle - Mooney’s KLM team-mate - is also competing in the Seniors Cup and took the third step on the rostrum in his opening race before picking up sixth, fourth and fifth place finishes.
Liddle’s nephew Jak, from Acklam, roared to his best ever racing position - seventh - in the Pre-National 600s as well as recording 17th, 13th and 15th place finishes.
And Brotton’s Davey Todd enjoyed another fantastic weekend in the GB Racing Sportsman Elite 600s. After qualifying third, the former supermoto expert brought his Kawasaki ZXR 600 home third, second and fourth and is fifth in the overall standings.
The next meeting is at Snetterton on May 3-4.
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