Benk
18th May 2009, 11:33
Race Report
Well, the most eventful race meeting for me to date. Both good and frustrating at different times, but ended positively with some valuable lessons learnt.
F3 Qualifying
After much umming and arring the night before I had decided it was going to be clear in the morning, and wet it the arvo. Needless to say it drizzled majority of the morning, so the slicks idea was a terrible one. Anyway, got out in the drizzle with slicks and it was pretty slippery to say the least, nearly lost the front a couple of times on the initial 2 warm up laps. Bike was over fueling to buggering (due to my tinkering the week before), so overall the bike was going like a dog with no legs. By the time I got those out of the way, thought Id try for a 'fast' one (hahaha), anyway between turn 4 and 5 rear brake locked solid on me. Luckily the others managed to miss me (thanks guys). Muscled the old girl off the track and waited to be picked up.
Posties qualifying
Not enough time to change from slicks, so wobbled my way round, as it was drizzling harder now, bike still feeling Shiite. Qualified something horrible with a 2:15 or something equally appalling.
Decision was made to raise the needles, and swap to wets, as I couldn’t race the bike as it was anyway. This took a bit longer than anticipated, and I ended up missing the first posties race.
Oh well, that gave the track plenty of time to dry out, and so I had to swap back to slicks. 20/20 hindsight. Awesome.
Posties Race 2
Didn’t know my exact grid position, so just rocked up to the back of the pack, hung around Phil somewhere.
Lights went out and got a reasonable start (for me at least), passed a couple into turn 1. Put my head down and cut through a fair amount of the back half of the pack. Caught Scracha mid way through the race, and had a few little looks up the inside, the 600 pulled a bit down the straight, but I would make up some time though the infield. He put the KR-1 between us, and me hitting a false neutral between 5th and 6th pretty much settled it, and that’s how it stayed till the end of the race.
Bike felt great after some changes, better than ever infact, and I felt like I had more time in me, which was reassuring to know for next time.
Broke my PB twice in one race, a 1:49.8 (from memory, sub 1:50 anyway) and 1:49.323. Admin error (and me swapping from pre89 snr on the fzr1000 to pre 89 jnr on the nc30, meant I got dumped into the pre89 snr on mylaps), but moving myself around in the results meant I got a 6th for posties jnr, which I was stoked about considering where I qualified.
Notes to self.
Be ready for racing 2 days before race, I’m over getting to bed at 1 every time I race.
Make fuelling changes before track days, not races.
Be more organised with tyres.
Well, the most eventful race meeting for me to date. Both good and frustrating at different times, but ended positively with some valuable lessons learnt.
F3 Qualifying
After much umming and arring the night before I had decided it was going to be clear in the morning, and wet it the arvo. Needless to say it drizzled majority of the morning, so the slicks idea was a terrible one. Anyway, got out in the drizzle with slicks and it was pretty slippery to say the least, nearly lost the front a couple of times on the initial 2 warm up laps. Bike was over fueling to buggering (due to my tinkering the week before), so overall the bike was going like a dog with no legs. By the time I got those out of the way, thought Id try for a 'fast' one (hahaha), anyway between turn 4 and 5 rear brake locked solid on me. Luckily the others managed to miss me (thanks guys). Muscled the old girl off the track and waited to be picked up.
Posties qualifying
Not enough time to change from slicks, so wobbled my way round, as it was drizzling harder now, bike still feeling Shiite. Qualified something horrible with a 2:15 or something equally appalling.
Decision was made to raise the needles, and swap to wets, as I couldn’t race the bike as it was anyway. This took a bit longer than anticipated, and I ended up missing the first posties race.
Oh well, that gave the track plenty of time to dry out, and so I had to swap back to slicks. 20/20 hindsight. Awesome.
Posties Race 2
Didn’t know my exact grid position, so just rocked up to the back of the pack, hung around Phil somewhere.
Lights went out and got a reasonable start (for me at least), passed a couple into turn 1. Put my head down and cut through a fair amount of the back half of the pack. Caught Scracha mid way through the race, and had a few little looks up the inside, the 600 pulled a bit down the straight, but I would make up some time though the infield. He put the KR-1 between us, and me hitting a false neutral between 5th and 6th pretty much settled it, and that’s how it stayed till the end of the race.
Bike felt great after some changes, better than ever infact, and I felt like I had more time in me, which was reassuring to know for next time.
Broke my PB twice in one race, a 1:49.8 (from memory, sub 1:50 anyway) and 1:49.323. Admin error (and me swapping from pre89 snr on the fzr1000 to pre 89 jnr on the nc30, meant I got dumped into the pre89 snr on mylaps), but moving myself around in the results meant I got a 6th for posties jnr, which I was stoked about considering where I qualified.
Notes to self.
Be ready for racing 2 days before race, I’m over getting to bed at 1 every time I race.
Make fuelling changes before track days, not races.
Be more organised with tyres.