evol mas
12th December 2007, 18:51
Sam Love
South island Report
7th 8th /12/07
Friday 7th December
Timaru
Testing / practice
I woke to a fine day in Christchurch and a two hour trip to levels .the weather varied on the trip to Timaru but thankfully I arrived at the track to a cloudless, windless day. I was quite lucky, as there weren’t many people at the track which allowed for lots of track time. The first twenty minute session I just took it easy finding where the track went trying to work out the basics of my reference points and apexes. Luckily Shaun Harris had organized John Hepburn (a local legend) to come to the track and give me some pointers which helped out a lot. John seemed to know the track inside out and backwards, every piece of info he gave me I put into practice and made my lines a lot smoother and consistently brought my lap times down. John left at around lunch time as he was otherwise occupied but I kept applying the tips and tricks he had taught me throughout the afternoon gaining more speed and breaking latter with every lap. By the end of the day I had done over 80 laps and had destroyed a set of tires, which was unfortunate as I had to race on them the next day at ruapuna. Levels raceway is now my new favorite track because of its fast sweeping corners and long durations of lean time
Saturday 8th December
Ruapuna
King of Canterbury
Saturday morning was a little bit overcast and had a slight breeze. Every one had told me that if I liked levels ruapuna would be easy, but it was far from it. I found it much more technical to learn as most of the corners link up in a set of 3 or 4 so if you get one wrong you put yourself offline for the rest.
In practice I followed some of the slower riders around and tried to find the rite lines to take. This was probably the wrong thing to do as they were obviously slow for a reason. In the first race I was still taking my time to work out lines and passing maneuvers on the slower riders which helped out later in the day. In the second race I started further up on the grid and followed a few of the faster f3 and pro twin’s bikes around gaining a few places to get a fifth. In the final race I started on the second row and got a great start getting pole into the first corner and held first place for half a lap before being relegated to second by local young gun tom. We traded places a few times before coming up on some lap riders on the infield.tom used his local knowledge to get past them quickly but I got held up by them and had to settle for second.
I thoroughly enjoyed my trip down south and look forward to the nationals in January
Big thanks to all of my sponsors
Prime explosives
N&D natural health
ACR Fiberglass
Switch electrical
Pirelli
AGV sport
Repsol
EBC breaks
KBC
EK chain
VAZ sprocket
Ohlin’s (Kerry & Robert)
And a special thanks to every one who helped me out down south, especially
The Jones family
John Hepburn
Shaun Harris
South island Report
7th 8th /12/07
Friday 7th December
Timaru
Testing / practice
I woke to a fine day in Christchurch and a two hour trip to levels .the weather varied on the trip to Timaru but thankfully I arrived at the track to a cloudless, windless day. I was quite lucky, as there weren’t many people at the track which allowed for lots of track time. The first twenty minute session I just took it easy finding where the track went trying to work out the basics of my reference points and apexes. Luckily Shaun Harris had organized John Hepburn (a local legend) to come to the track and give me some pointers which helped out a lot. John seemed to know the track inside out and backwards, every piece of info he gave me I put into practice and made my lines a lot smoother and consistently brought my lap times down. John left at around lunch time as he was otherwise occupied but I kept applying the tips and tricks he had taught me throughout the afternoon gaining more speed and breaking latter with every lap. By the end of the day I had done over 80 laps and had destroyed a set of tires, which was unfortunate as I had to race on them the next day at ruapuna. Levels raceway is now my new favorite track because of its fast sweeping corners and long durations of lean time
Saturday 8th December
Ruapuna
King of Canterbury
Saturday morning was a little bit overcast and had a slight breeze. Every one had told me that if I liked levels ruapuna would be easy, but it was far from it. I found it much more technical to learn as most of the corners link up in a set of 3 or 4 so if you get one wrong you put yourself offline for the rest.
In practice I followed some of the slower riders around and tried to find the rite lines to take. This was probably the wrong thing to do as they were obviously slow for a reason. In the first race I was still taking my time to work out lines and passing maneuvers on the slower riders which helped out later in the day. In the second race I started further up on the grid and followed a few of the faster f3 and pro twin’s bikes around gaining a few places to get a fifth. In the final race I started on the second row and got a great start getting pole into the first corner and held first place for half a lap before being relegated to second by local young gun tom. We traded places a few times before coming up on some lap riders on the infield.tom used his local knowledge to get past them quickly but I got held up by them and had to settle for second.
I thoroughly enjoyed my trip down south and look forward to the nationals in January
Big thanks to all of my sponsors
Prime explosives
N&D natural health
ACR Fiberglass
Switch electrical
Pirelli
AGV sport
Repsol
EBC breaks
KBC
EK chain
VAZ sprocket
Ohlin’s (Kerry & Robert)
And a special thanks to every one who helped me out down south, especially
The Jones family
John Hepburn
Shaun Harris