Sketchy_Racer
11th March 2009, 20:48
Sketchy's NZSBK Round 5
I always seem to struggle to put together these race reports. It's so hard to capture all of what happened on the weekend and put it into words.
Thursday
I took Thursday off work so that I could have an entire day to get myself up to Pukekohe. This was going to be the first time I had been further north than Matamata. For the trip up I had Andrew (Skunk) who kindly offered to drive me up there so I wouldn't drain myself before a weekend of racing. It ended up proving very lucky that I had him with me as a puncture on the trailer caused a few issues! We arrived at Pukekohe at about 8pm Thursday night, where we went to Bernie Smith's house where we were to stay for the weekend (Thanks Bernie).
Friday
I've never raced at Puke before so the Friday test day was a must. I was on my own for the test day as the bikes owner and mechanic Chris Osborne had work on Friday and was heading up that night. The first session was wet and I was riding very slowly. I guess you could call them sighting laps basically. The track was in a word, interesting. It was very fast and quite a few large bumps to make things interesting. Not a hugely technical track, but not necessarily a easy track to go fast on. After the first session the track had dried out, so I went about swapping my wets out in favour of drys. Again I took it relatively easy still learning the track and my on board timer indicated a time of 1.06. At that stage I had no idea what time was considered fast time and wasn't particularly worried about that. I had a sit down after that session and analysed what I had learnt from the previous sessions and figured out what I needed to be doing at some parts of the track.
The final session went well and I dropped another second of my time and got down to a low 1.05 which I was really happy with, after speaking to Chris on the phone he told me he didn't expect me to get into the 1.05s on my first day around there. I can't remember when but Craig Shirriffs came over after one of my sessions and offered some gladly welcomed advice about what I was doing wrong through the left handers after the hair pin. Cheers for that Craig.
Chris arrived at the Smith's house just after 10pm and we headed for bed shortly after.
Saturday
After a good nights sleep I was looking forward to getting back on the track. We had two Practice/Qualifying sessions and one race on the Saturday.
First practice
Heading out onto the track I was feeling very comfortable after Chris had made some much needed gearing changes and a few suspension adjustments. I had a newer set of tyres on for this session and the bike was gripping excellently and with the gearing change I could pull a great deal more speed down the back straight. I ended up with a 1.04.440 which was still a way off Glen Williams 1.03.8 but I was happy that I was consistently dropping time each session and knew that I was in with a shot of matching Glen's time.
Qualifying
In the first laps of qualifying it started raining. I knew it was pointless being out there as I wasn't going to achieve much on slicks. Just after I pulled in, the session was ended and everyone else came back in and we were given 30mins to sort out what tyres we wanted to run. In the end it dried out and we stayed on the slicks.
No more other changes were made to the bike as it was working very well and the only thing that was need was the rider to ride a bit faster. Again the bike felt as good as before and I slowly worked on moving my brake markers and reference points around to try pick up some more speed. I was absolutely stoked to see a 1.03.3 show up on the lap timer. This also put me on pole position I found out as I got back to the pit shed. I was beaming a massive smile. This was the first time I've ever qualified on pole!
Race one
I got a crap start and bogged the bike just as I had done at Manfeild. Starts are something I need to keep working at. I was in 5th place going on the back straight. I picked off a couple of the Protwin bikes and pulled in Terry Fitzgerald a bit. I got a good drive out of the hair pin and passed Terry coming up over the hill onto the front straight. Glen W had made a slight gap but I knew I could pull him in. I did this much faster than I thought too, and closed the gap enough to catch his slipstream on the back straight, pull out and pass him. The 450 certainly had the legs at the end of the straights, and I think (from where I was sitting) the 650s got the initial jump out of the corners. Once I got past Glen my plan was to try make a gap which worked well and I crossed the finish line to win my second National race and break another lap record with a 1.02.399. The funny bit was my confusion with the start finish flag. I missed the last lap flag and when I saw the chequered flag it was largely hidden by the last lap flag that was being shown to the lap traffic ahead of me so I did a second race pace cool down lap and felt like a bit of a dork.
When I got back to pit I was beaming a huge smile and so happy with the result! We packed up and headed back to the Smith's place after getting some pizza for dinner and got another great night sleep (well I did).
Sunday
The weather looked a little threatening on Sunday morning and sure enough on the opening lap of scrub in it started raining. I had a big rear slide coming up the hill which surprised me as I was going very slow, and Eric De Boer showed that it was very slippery by crashing right where I had my slide.
Race Two
The weather still had not cleared so we were on wets for this race. I got the world's worst start; first bogging on the start line, and then achieving some chronic wheel-spin. I think I was about 10th going on the back straight and knew I had some work cut out for me. I didn't feel all that confident on the wet Puke track and was receiving some unusual feeling from the wets. I put this down to a great deal of new things to deal with from trying to race on a track which I had little experience on, and the first time I had ridden the 450 in the wet at pace. All this aside as each lap went past I picked up a little more time here and there and worked my way up to second place. The track had also started drying out quite a bit by the half way point, but was still very wet going onto the back straight. Nearing the end of the race I could see Glen W in the distance and knew I was gaining on him, but ran out of laps and settled for a solid second place. I was happy with that and most importantly bought the bike back in once piece! I was shocked to find that even though finishing in second I posted the fastest lap by over half a second.
Final Race the TT
I was really determined to win this one. After the race in the wet previous I was hoping for a dry race as I certainly felt a great deal more comfortable going around the track in the dry.
I asked Chris for some pointers about the start as I wanted to get a good one at least once on the weekend. He explained it nice and simple and it must have worked as I got a great start and held my lead through turn one until Glen chucked it up the inside going into the left hander. Glen was certainly on the pace a lot more this race, and I think due to a slight wind change on the back straight the 450 didn't reel him in anything like what it was doing in the first race. I chased him down and pulled alongside him going down the back straight, but couldn't pass him. I held off until braking where I braked quite deep and felt his bike against mine as we tipped into the hairpin. I held this lead and pulled a half second gap on him, but as soon as I encountered lap traffic I lost that as I was probably a bit too conservative with my passing. It was great racing though and I could hear Glen's 650 breathing down my neck as we went around the track. Nearing the end of the race as I approached the hairpin there was a big cluster (about 6-8 bikes) and I knew it was going to be very interesting filtering through them. I went to go up the inside of the bunch but as I started braking, one guy moved over and took the gap I had planned, so I ended up right smack in the middle of a bunch of slower moving traffic. I got around the corner but had one rider kind of bounce off me as I went around the outside of him. Later I learned that another rider on the inside of him had hit his front wheel out and he went down which caused another rider to hit his bike and go skyward which resulted in a red flag as the rider that went skyward knocked himself out. Because the race was over 75% complete it was declared which meant I won the TT! It would have been much nicer to finish under chequered flag but such is life. Best lap was a 1.02.6 which was 2 tenths slower than the previous days time but also Glen had dropped almost a second off his previous days time doing a 1.02.7!
In summary, the weekend went great I did not expect to be where I was in the races and certainly not at lap record pace on a new track. The Ozzy450R performed amazingly and Chris as always had the bike running and handling beautifully.
Again a huge thanks to Chris Osborne, I simply would not have been there if it were not for him. I really do feel honored to have Chris helping me out and am blown away by his support.
My dad for the lend of his vehicle to get to the track and his financial support (Parents are great aren't they!)
Andrew and Leigh (Skunk and Skunk Control) – For their off track support. These two help me so much; again out of good will and I can't thank you enough.
All the marshals, volunteers, supporters and everyone that came and gave me encouragement and support. It makes it all worth the while when I hear that people throughly enjoyed watching the racing!
Thank you for taking the time to read my report, I hope you enjoyed it.
Cheers,
-Glen Skachill
I always seem to struggle to put together these race reports. It's so hard to capture all of what happened on the weekend and put it into words.
Thursday
I took Thursday off work so that I could have an entire day to get myself up to Pukekohe. This was going to be the first time I had been further north than Matamata. For the trip up I had Andrew (Skunk) who kindly offered to drive me up there so I wouldn't drain myself before a weekend of racing. It ended up proving very lucky that I had him with me as a puncture on the trailer caused a few issues! We arrived at Pukekohe at about 8pm Thursday night, where we went to Bernie Smith's house where we were to stay for the weekend (Thanks Bernie).
Friday
I've never raced at Puke before so the Friday test day was a must. I was on my own for the test day as the bikes owner and mechanic Chris Osborne had work on Friday and was heading up that night. The first session was wet and I was riding very slowly. I guess you could call them sighting laps basically. The track was in a word, interesting. It was very fast and quite a few large bumps to make things interesting. Not a hugely technical track, but not necessarily a easy track to go fast on. After the first session the track had dried out, so I went about swapping my wets out in favour of drys. Again I took it relatively easy still learning the track and my on board timer indicated a time of 1.06. At that stage I had no idea what time was considered fast time and wasn't particularly worried about that. I had a sit down after that session and analysed what I had learnt from the previous sessions and figured out what I needed to be doing at some parts of the track.
The final session went well and I dropped another second of my time and got down to a low 1.05 which I was really happy with, after speaking to Chris on the phone he told me he didn't expect me to get into the 1.05s on my first day around there. I can't remember when but Craig Shirriffs came over after one of my sessions and offered some gladly welcomed advice about what I was doing wrong through the left handers after the hair pin. Cheers for that Craig.
Chris arrived at the Smith's house just after 10pm and we headed for bed shortly after.
Saturday
After a good nights sleep I was looking forward to getting back on the track. We had two Practice/Qualifying sessions and one race on the Saturday.
First practice
Heading out onto the track I was feeling very comfortable after Chris had made some much needed gearing changes and a few suspension adjustments. I had a newer set of tyres on for this session and the bike was gripping excellently and with the gearing change I could pull a great deal more speed down the back straight. I ended up with a 1.04.440 which was still a way off Glen Williams 1.03.8 but I was happy that I was consistently dropping time each session and knew that I was in with a shot of matching Glen's time.
Qualifying
In the first laps of qualifying it started raining. I knew it was pointless being out there as I wasn't going to achieve much on slicks. Just after I pulled in, the session was ended and everyone else came back in and we were given 30mins to sort out what tyres we wanted to run. In the end it dried out and we stayed on the slicks.
No more other changes were made to the bike as it was working very well and the only thing that was need was the rider to ride a bit faster. Again the bike felt as good as before and I slowly worked on moving my brake markers and reference points around to try pick up some more speed. I was absolutely stoked to see a 1.03.3 show up on the lap timer. This also put me on pole position I found out as I got back to the pit shed. I was beaming a massive smile. This was the first time I've ever qualified on pole!
Race one
I got a crap start and bogged the bike just as I had done at Manfeild. Starts are something I need to keep working at. I was in 5th place going on the back straight. I picked off a couple of the Protwin bikes and pulled in Terry Fitzgerald a bit. I got a good drive out of the hair pin and passed Terry coming up over the hill onto the front straight. Glen W had made a slight gap but I knew I could pull him in. I did this much faster than I thought too, and closed the gap enough to catch his slipstream on the back straight, pull out and pass him. The 450 certainly had the legs at the end of the straights, and I think (from where I was sitting) the 650s got the initial jump out of the corners. Once I got past Glen my plan was to try make a gap which worked well and I crossed the finish line to win my second National race and break another lap record with a 1.02.399. The funny bit was my confusion with the start finish flag. I missed the last lap flag and when I saw the chequered flag it was largely hidden by the last lap flag that was being shown to the lap traffic ahead of me so I did a second race pace cool down lap and felt like a bit of a dork.
When I got back to pit I was beaming a huge smile and so happy with the result! We packed up and headed back to the Smith's place after getting some pizza for dinner and got another great night sleep (well I did).
Sunday
The weather looked a little threatening on Sunday morning and sure enough on the opening lap of scrub in it started raining. I had a big rear slide coming up the hill which surprised me as I was going very slow, and Eric De Boer showed that it was very slippery by crashing right where I had my slide.
Race Two
The weather still had not cleared so we were on wets for this race. I got the world's worst start; first bogging on the start line, and then achieving some chronic wheel-spin. I think I was about 10th going on the back straight and knew I had some work cut out for me. I didn't feel all that confident on the wet Puke track and was receiving some unusual feeling from the wets. I put this down to a great deal of new things to deal with from trying to race on a track which I had little experience on, and the first time I had ridden the 450 in the wet at pace. All this aside as each lap went past I picked up a little more time here and there and worked my way up to second place. The track had also started drying out quite a bit by the half way point, but was still very wet going onto the back straight. Nearing the end of the race I could see Glen W in the distance and knew I was gaining on him, but ran out of laps and settled for a solid second place. I was happy with that and most importantly bought the bike back in once piece! I was shocked to find that even though finishing in second I posted the fastest lap by over half a second.
Final Race the TT
I was really determined to win this one. After the race in the wet previous I was hoping for a dry race as I certainly felt a great deal more comfortable going around the track in the dry.
I asked Chris for some pointers about the start as I wanted to get a good one at least once on the weekend. He explained it nice and simple and it must have worked as I got a great start and held my lead through turn one until Glen chucked it up the inside going into the left hander. Glen was certainly on the pace a lot more this race, and I think due to a slight wind change on the back straight the 450 didn't reel him in anything like what it was doing in the first race. I chased him down and pulled alongside him going down the back straight, but couldn't pass him. I held off until braking where I braked quite deep and felt his bike against mine as we tipped into the hairpin. I held this lead and pulled a half second gap on him, but as soon as I encountered lap traffic I lost that as I was probably a bit too conservative with my passing. It was great racing though and I could hear Glen's 650 breathing down my neck as we went around the track. Nearing the end of the race as I approached the hairpin there was a big cluster (about 6-8 bikes) and I knew it was going to be very interesting filtering through them. I went to go up the inside of the bunch but as I started braking, one guy moved over and took the gap I had planned, so I ended up right smack in the middle of a bunch of slower moving traffic. I got around the corner but had one rider kind of bounce off me as I went around the outside of him. Later I learned that another rider on the inside of him had hit his front wheel out and he went down which caused another rider to hit his bike and go skyward which resulted in a red flag as the rider that went skyward knocked himself out. Because the race was over 75% complete it was declared which meant I won the TT! It would have been much nicer to finish under chequered flag but such is life. Best lap was a 1.02.6 which was 2 tenths slower than the previous days time but also Glen had dropped almost a second off his previous days time doing a 1.02.7!
In summary, the weekend went great I did not expect to be where I was in the races and certainly not at lap record pace on a new track. The Ozzy450R performed amazingly and Chris as always had the bike running and handling beautifully.
Again a huge thanks to Chris Osborne, I simply would not have been there if it were not for him. I really do feel honored to have Chris helping me out and am blown away by his support.
My dad for the lend of his vehicle to get to the track and his financial support (Parents are great aren't they!)
Andrew and Leigh (Skunk and Skunk Control) – For their off track support. These two help me so much; again out of good will and I can't thank you enough.
All the marshals, volunteers, supporters and everyone that came and gave me encouragement and support. It makes it all worth the while when I hear that people throughly enjoyed watching the racing!
Thank you for taking the time to read my report, I hope you enjoyed it.
Cheers,
-Glen Skachill