Rnd 5 Hampton Downs Updates

[Biggles08]

The marshals did a fukin awesome job cleaning up the contents of 'the pirates' engine.

One lesson to be learnt from this would be to provide more brooms for cleanup...saw some marshals unable to help speed the cleanup up because they had no more brooms apparently.... was kind of painful watching turn one-turn two (aka Shirriffs corner) get cleaned up with one broom, one bucket of sand and a 'supervisor' standing by watching.

Over all I thought the day was pretty successful and besides what has already been mentioned (not starting til 10am etc) I thought AMCC did a better job than previous meetings I've been to...for a start it wasn't at Pukekohe shithole ;-)

[javawocky]

I captured heaps of short clips of practice on Saturday and Random clips from Sunday, I hope to edit them together at some point into a music vid or something, but here is the unedit far away clip of the off at the start of the 600's involving Skachill and Smith. Sorry its so far away, but its a cheap o cam from my bike with no zoom, so put your glasses on pops...

[sidecar bob]

I'm assuming sidecar 111 will receive some pit justice... dropped his oil twice in 3 days (and then a subsequent fire after the 2nd time). Plenty of time spent having to try to clean that up, except I got lucky. Neither incident affected my point.

I think he should be put against a wall & shot with a ball of his own shit.
As a result of the delay & the fact that he has undone in one weekend, 10 years of sidecars trying to shake the reputation of oil dropping, sidecars were put to the end of the programme.
Understandably, superbikes didnt want to take the risk of going out after them again.
The upshot of that was, that the two south island sidecar teams had to miss the last race in favour of catching a plane, & superbikes lost most of their spectators.
If i were in their situation, i would be heartily pissed off.

[wharfy]

I think he should be put against a wall & shot with a ball of his own shit.
.

It's a long time since I've heard that expression used...........

[scracha]

I think he should be put against a wall & shot with a ball of his own shit.

Questions I have to ask:
Was it known that there was a strong possibility of it $hitting itself again?
Why didn't the catch tray erm...catch it?

Maybe they were just unlucky 3 times.

[cmoore]

FOOD....Im sure it was ok at some stage....i lined up on sunday avo with 20 or so others...they ran out of chips just before i got there....then ran out of buns....and they lost my order..so i waited and waited....after a while i had a groan and they took the "meat" outa some other poor persons order and gave them to me.....becuase they were the last buns...this was at about 2-3pm...

Can someone also explain the pit lane thing?.....people walking all over it and then getting yelled at......bikes having to weave through people to get to the pit lane....and as everyone else has said...it was a great day and they will only get better, what a great facility and so close to Auckland...

Lets hope they also get the timing right on other biking events as we seemed to have three clashing and some people would have liked to have gone to all of them...

[sidecar bob]

Questions I have to ask:
Was it known that there was a strong possibility of it $hitting itself again?
Why didn't the catch tray erm...catch it?

Maybe they were just unlucky 3 times.

Given the competitor's track record, there was a high chance of it $hitting itself again.
The catch tray didnt catch it all because unfortunately thay are not designed to catch the ENTIRE CONTENTS of the sump.
The two leaks on different days were caused by failure in totally different areas.

[kittytamer]

It was a great day of racing despite the holdups. These things happen all the time. Even WSBK can be delayed due to cleaning up mess from previous races.
I was impressed with the crowd turn out and the stands put on by the manufactures. The BMW's were awesome. It looked very impressive from the motorway on the way down.
I took a bunch of photos of the last F3, F2 and Superbike races. Have a look here: Hampton Downs Photos
I may even have a go on track next year...

[Gremlin]

Can someone also explain the pit lane thing?.....people walking all over it and then getting yelled at......bikes having to weave through people to get to the pit lane....

Its a matter of conflicting rules and desires. The racers want to put on tents, displays etc, have the public walking past, and they need it. However, this creates crowds in the pits, becomes a safety issue in terms of crowds, bikes trying to get through and technically, children are not allowed on the pit wall and jandals are not allowed in pit lane (closed shoes only - same requirement for marshals)

Questions I have to ask:
Was it known that there was a strong possibility of it $hitting itself again?

From speaking to others, I believe it has done it enough times before to be known... The issue is, if they say its been fixed, and it passes scruntineering... what can you do? (Besides cleaning up after it of course). I was highly in favour of sending them out to clean up their own mess. That type of thing can happen in a matter of seconds, and it takes us freaken ages to dust it enough and then clean up the dust. After that delay (which was long as roughly half the tracks racing line had to be cleaned) the superbikes were still reporting it was slippery.

There were delays for several reasons... Also, you can't put any entertainment round the track while marshals are out, due to safety. On the big mess, several brooms from points were rounded up for that, usually one broom per point, at least one fire extinguisher and at least one bucket of dust. Also started late due to changes being made from lessons learned on the previous days, photo taken at the corkscrew of marshals and officials, and from just before 8am, almost 50 marshals signed in, geared up, assigned to points, briefed and so on... tis a lot of organising. Also had a shortage of radios due to changes in marshal layout...

[CHOPPA]

I saw a tractor going around the track early in the morning with a big ass sweeper on the front why wasnt that used to sweep all the gravel off??

[PirateJafa]

I saw a tractor going around the track early in the morning with a big ass sweeper on the front why wasnt that used to sweep all the gravel off??

There was a tractor with a sweeper working at sweeping the track. Unfortunately, believe it or not, tractors go around Hampton Downs a bit slower than your superbike does.

[Pixie]

Yes, it's all very well knowing the reasons why there were long delays,now.
For all the casual spectators,some of them first timers,who got pissed off at watching a Subaru,Holden and a Blue ute go round and round the track for an hour,as far as the spectators knew for the car occupants' pleasure,it was a lost opportunity to create some new road racing fans.
Comments I heard:"Too disorganised","Oh no,they are f**king going around again!"etc.

Get a little more professional AMCC.Put the sidecars on at the end of a meeting for a start.

[cmoore]

there were a couple of riders missing from the second 125GP race? the one where three went down on the first lap (about 4pm)......i saw one of them get really pissed off and try and get the officials to let him start since the race was re started anyway.....does anyone know why they missed and or couldn't restart??

[Kiwi Graham:Me]

there were a couple of riders missing from the second 125GP race? the one where three went down on the first lap (about 4pm)......i saw one of them get really pissed off and try and get the officials to let him start since the race was re started anyway.....does anyone know why they missed and or couldn't restart??

It was poor old Jaden Hassen that wasnt allowed into the restart, he crashed on the warm up lap on errr.....some oil left by a postie that was cleaned after their race and before the superbikes. Bloody shame he couldn't start.

[Bikernereid]

[QUOTE=javawocky;1129700262]I captured heaps of short clips of practice on Saturday and Random clips from Sunday, I hope to edit them together at some point into a music vid or something, but here is the unedit far away clip of the off at the start of the 600's involving Skachill and Smith. Sorry its so far away, but its a cheap o cam from my bike with no zoom, so put your glasses on pops...

Great to see someone took a camera so that those of us who couldn't make it can see some of the races. Will keep an eye for your other footage. Lets hope that Hamptons makes it on to the TV at some point but wont hold my breath.