Thunderfest winners come within a whisker of perfection

With a brilliant sun beating down from a cloudless blue sky it could have been Jerez rather than Derbyshire, but the Tarmac was melting at the Darley Moor circuit for the eighth edition of Thunderfest, which is a time trial rather than a race meeting, on Monday, May 7, writes
Frank Melling.

Competitors decide how fast they want to ride and then strive to keep to their target time for 20 minutes plus two laps – and the best are incredibly good at it! With just tachometers and their own mental computers to rely on, every rider who took home a trophy got within 1mph of the target time.

Classic racer Alain Marie, who’d never ridden at Thunderfest before, took first place overall with a time only 0.03mph faster than his chosen speed, and said: “It was really difficult to go fast and still stay completely focused on maintaining my target speed. It’s much harder than racing!”

Read more and view more images in the June 2018 issue of OBM – on sale now!