10/06/21: NSR Classic – Real or Unreal?

Real or Unreal?

Race info courtesy of the spies again this week, although some of it has been mangled by WhatsApp and defeated your correspondent’s crack team of code-breakers. Anyone know what @}☹#~*!☹ means, or why Terry and Josh were calling everything unreal?

Terry, tired of playing Cinderella racing to get home before midnight, appointed himself chief chivvy-upper, insisting that racing started promptly. It did, which is some sort of miracle. He, Ed and Neil enjoyed a good midfield scrap, Graham was struggling to find any speed, but the real action was at the front, where Julian and Josh were dominating.

Julian got off to a flying start, winning his first and third heats and very nearly his second too. Unreal? Perhaps. Josh took heat four, but it was another win for Julian in heat five, giving him a fairly comfortable third of a lap advantage going into the final heat.

And then it happened again, Josh coming alive in his last heat, banging in his best performance by far to turn his third of a lap deficit into a quarter of a lap winning margin. Was his pace in his earlier heats real or unreal? I’ve no idea, but the @}☹#~*!☹ makes more sense now. It was probably runner-up Julian’s mood.