Well it was coming and I kew it & I deserved it. My 4th road race meet ever and I finally hit the dirt. Or tar.
Turned up in pretty cold conditions at Taupo - certainly less than 10 degrees. I sealed my fate by saying to Curious George "go easy in the first few laps 'cause yer tyres will be extra cold and the track is too - and it's starting to drizzle". Git (me) then went out and crashed in the first left hander after the start/finish straight on the first lap of practice. I lost the front hard while tipping it in (shite it went over quick!) and skidded on my butt behind the RGV well off the track. Tried to get up while still sliding too cause I thought I was going slowly enough. Git. Got tipped over onto my rights. Git. Sore butt; sore pinky and sore shoulder, broken foot peg, broken shifter, bent clip on, broken cluth lever and twisted steering damper. And several nasty scratches. Git.
Back into the pits and with mucho help (and parts) from George (thanks George you rock) and we got the thing back into race ready form for race 1. Just. Kind of. Replaced shifter was a bit bent and clip on was still bent; so felt a bit awkward.
Only 20 riders this time turned up for F3 - no doubt a result of date clashed with other events which as many others have posted is just plain dumb.
Race 1 went pretty well - got an ok start (about 10th or so) and enjoyed catching and passing riders - including splitting another RGV (yay another RGV out there!) down the left and a SV650 down the right going into the sweeper 3 abreast. Got up to 5th.
Race 2 got a heaps worse start (man I need to practice starts) - passed another couple of motards and another two SV650s (bit of block passin involved - heh heh) and then caught the same RGV and passed him on the last lap to beat him by about a bike length. Was great to be racing a bike of the same type and performance at last. 7th.
Race 3 - anohter crap start (even have video evidence of me getting swamped - awful) and had to get to work passing riders again. Caught up to RGV dude and we both got stuck behind a SV. I was trying all sorts of lines but just couldn't get by - even managed to caress the other RGV's farings a few times with my knees but couldn't make it stick. Then last lap - SV man goes straight on at the same corner where I crashed - he didn't come off but it distracted me enough to lose about 10 metres on the RGV guy - and that was that, 7th again.
Finished the day 5th overall but the highlight was racing the other RGV250 - F3 is such a mich-mash of bikes it's not often you end up racing someone with the same skills and the same power - usually they have less skills and more power; or vice versa.
That is the end of the PMCC champs for this year - I finished in 4th overall out of 58 odd riders which I am pretty happy with - although it helped me a fair bit turning up to all 4 rounds. Even so by the end top 10 finishes were easy so happy with that for a start to my road racing caper.
Thanks to George again for coming with me and racing too - good fun and good to see you getting quicker too.
Not sure what next.....I wanna get to Manfield.
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Originally Posted by Motoracer
howabout you come down to Manfield and do some real racing???
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