By Jeremy Ryan
Myles Wasley made a wildcard entry in the Hel Performance Motostar British Championship at Oulton Park, at the weekend.
This was his first time he rode a Moto3 bike. The result of the weekend was not important, the purpose was to give the Stroud youngster some Moto3 experience.
Wasley,15, usually races a KTM in a different support class of the British Superbike series, but the standard Moto3 of the Motostar series is much smaller, lighter and much more powerful than anything he has ridden before.
Free Practice: Free practice was the first chance for Wasley to begin to familiarise himself with the new bike.
As his confidence grew with the NSF250R Honda he steadily reduced his lap times and by the end of the session he had trimmed them by several seconds.
The second free practice took place on the Friday afternoon. With light rain falling toward the end of the session, the track conditions were not ideal. In places the circuit was quite greasy.
Wasley used his time to continue to learn the track without taking risks in what would end up being a pretty irrelevant session.
Qualifying: As forecast qualifying took place on a wet track first thing on Saturday morning.
The second session of qualifying was expected to be on a dry track so Q1 was useful in respect of gaining some damp track experience, but would have little bearing on grid positions for Sunday’s race.
Wasley completed 13 laps finishing 11th in the standard class.
By the end of the second qualifying session Wasley had slashed his lap time by five seconds. Clearly lacking experience, it being his first Moto3 race, he and the family were very happy with a 1:54.908 and were looking forward to the racing experience he would gain on Sunday.
The Race: The race conditions were dry but Wasley would have preferred damp conditions.
He felt he could have surprised a few people in the wet.
Starting from the back of the grid Wasley was registering consistent lap times throughout the race and not far off his qualifying times.
Wasley rode well, keeping upright and brought the Moto3 machine across the line in 11th position in the standard class.
He collected his first five Moto3 championship points. Wasley will return to his normal Santander Consumer Finance KTM British Junior Cup duties at the next round Donington Park on 16th to 18th September 2016.
He is seventh in that championship on 172 points, just 18 away from second place.
Wasley said: “I loved every minute of riding the Honda in what is an unbelievably fast class and at one of the hardest tracks in the world to get right.
" I would like to thank Cannock Site Services for letting me use the bike and Aqua Construction Racing, as well as my other sponsors.”
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