We always like reading the efforts of privateer racers, the ups, the downs, the general struggles, the good times, the tears, the laughter…you get the idea. So when Will, or Weston as he likes to be known (no “-Super-Mare” jokes please, or cider ones either), sent us an email last year setting out his plans and ambitions for 2013 and offering to write a series of blogs for us, we said “go for it lad!”. Just hope he hasn’t spent his entire race budget on the video!

Will Weston – Privateer Pig: No.1 A New Beginning!

Hello and welcome to the first of a series of blogs I will be writing for Dirt throughout the 2013 race season. You can read all about my efforts to make a name for myself on the World Cup circuit without the support of a trade team exclusively here!

Now if you are anything like me, you will be thinking “why the hell would I care what this arrogant teenager has to say?” and that’s fair enough, I am 16, I have never raced a world cup, I have only been racing for 5 years, I have little knowledge and wisdom compared to the authors of pieces you will be used to reading. However, I have a big year ahead of me which will be full of ups and downs (hopefully more ups) and reading this blog will give you a unique insight into my journey as a rider and as a person.

A New Beginning:

As many of you may know I raced for Madison/Saracen last year, and you are probably wondering why I am not doing so again this year. Long story short, it was always the plan for Madison to trim the team down into a factory world cup team after the first two years, and I had not proved to them that I was ready for that, so my time with the team came to an end! I took this in my stride and relished the opportunity to change things up, re-motivate myself and come back faster than ever.

Winter has been unbelievably busy for me, as I am still at school most of my time is taken up by that, then I have to fit in a solid few hours of training for racing, then find time to do my homework and revise, and then put together and send off a huge quantity of CVs to organise my 2013 sponsors! But I am not complaining, countless people have done the same, and in reality it is not as difficult as I like to think. When things become more difficult it motivates me further, so having a tight schedule doesn’t really bother me at all.

The hard work paid off however, as I am now entering the 2013 race season with a solid foundation of support from people who believe in me, people who I am proud to support, and people who will help me win races. I don’t want to use this blog as a platform to plug sponsors, as that will be terribly boring for you all, but I am very thankful to everyone who is providing me with support!

Forest Of Dean Shoot:

In order to let the world of Downhill know what I was doing this year I headed down to the Forest Of Dean and teamed up with Aspect Media’s Jacob Gibbins to produce this awesome video (up at the top, hopefully you’ve watched it!)

It is not the first time that I have done a thing like this, but this has been one of the most successful shoots! We had been meaning to do it for some time, and finally got round to it on Wednesday 3rd of April (yesterday as I write this).

I can’t drive, being 16, but luckily my sister was willing to make the two hour journey and wait for me all day! We set off from Wolverhampton early; relying on a TomTom to get us there and after a very strange route taken by the satnav we met Gibbins at FOD and got stuck in straight away.

Now shooting photos is not as fun as you may think, it mostly consists of riding a 10 second long piece of track over and over trying to pull a shape off a feature that wouldn’t normally register! The first thing we shot was the amazing picture below, this is possibly my favourite of the day and I was shocked we could get such a good picture from that piece of track.

Jacob basically asked me to do a scrub off a foot high little crest on a very flat track, that feels really odd to do, and at first I was puzzled but then when I saw the resulting picture, I was blown away by how cool it looks!

As much as I hate to admit it, Milky (Jacob Gibbins) is a genius; we managed to get some amazing shots from things which I simply wouldn’t have noticed. Like this picture of me roosting a turn, I just hit the corner hard, and it doesn’t feel particularly great and wham! He captures an amazing picture.

We spent the whole morning shooting pictures and the results were awesome. Ending the morning sending a pretty big step-down (the take-off to which is horrible) and getting again an awesome snap that really shows the size of the jump. It was not nice though hitting that jump over and over as you have to go mach 10 and the booter at the lip spat you out unexpectedly, but I just got it done and we got some really cool snaps from it.

The rest of the day was spent shooting video which was more fun! I just got told to go fast on a given bit of track and that’s what I did. The track was pretty flat and easy but the video looks great. Again reflecting on how clever Milky is with regards to this kind of thing…well it is his job.

By far the most fun part of the shoot was jumping that hip (1:25 in the vid) the only bummer is that I only got to do it twice! Both of which are featured in the edit. We finished with an interview which is always a little awkward, but I got through it without making too much of a fool of myself, I think.

Huge thanks to Aspect Media for putting together such an awesome edit and taking the time to shoot it all. See you all at the first BDS round! Click for Combe Sydenham Saracen BDS track preview.

Until next time,
Weston

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Website: www.willwestonracing.com