Deano's Round 4 WMCC

**Deano** · 16th August 2010, 12:02

Well it was another wet one so as soon as we had unpacked everything I set about changing to wets and shorter gearing for the long track.

Thanks to Robert Taylor once again for his help with set up !

Qualifying

I tagged on to Paul Duncan who was going pretty well, so I thought I should qualify ok.

Results came in and found I was 7th on second row of the grid, right behind Paul – sweet.

Race 1

Lights go out and Leigh Tidman, Jarrod Wintle and Paul Duncan were all a little slow getting off the line and I had a pearler so found myself 4th into T1 behind Scott Moir, Rob Smith and Geoff Booth.

Leigh came past soon after and I tagged on to the back of him. I found he was holding me up in a few spots so I managed to get past somewhere and settled in to a good rhythm.

Rob and Geoff were dicing hard up ahead by the sounds of it, as I caught back up to them at one stage – apparently they had both collided and run off the track slightly. I found out later I had set the fastest pro twin lap time in that race, albeit by 0.03s. Rob and Geoff were obviously slowing each other down with their battling.

A dry line had formed in places and the rear tyre was starting to overheat and slide on a lot of the sweeping corners. A little disconcerting but good practice I guess.

With a couple of laps to go my bike started missing. Jarrod Wintle came past and I expected to lose a few more spots, but thankfully got to the end of the race to take 3rd in pro twins.

I’m pretty confident that the cause of the miss was the front plug lead – the same thing happened at Wangas in 08 and I had it repaired and it had run fine up until now.

Malcolm, Alan and I all had a bit of a tinker with it over lunch, but it kept intermittently dropping one cylinder (or so it seemed anyway).

Considering the bikes misfire and the hot pace at the front of the field, I decided to play it safe and start from the rear of the grid for race 2. I thought I would just go out and circulate and collect as many points as possible. With only 7 or so of us in pro twins, I would still get points even if I finished last.

Race 2

I lined up at the back of the grid, but just in front of Kyle on the first of the GP125’s. I think this was a red rag to a bull as Kyle and I always have a little competition going with lap times at each round, and I knew he would be giving it heaps to get past me.

Lights go out and I got a great launch and into turn 1 about mid field. The bike was running ok and did so for a couple of laps until I caught Nicksta on her ER. I tried to make the pass and bloody bike starting cut out down the middle straight so I had to be a bit brave under brakes into Higgins to get by her. The bike cleared its throat so to speak and so I carried on reeling in as many bikes as possible. The bike only spluttered a few times during this race (so maybe the tinkering we did during lunch had helped).

To my surprise and delight, with a couple of laps to go, I saw Paul Duncan up ahead dicing with Zane Brookes (who is sitting 4th in the championship points behind me). I realised that I had a chance of catching them and not losing any points.

So in the end I managed to get past Zane on the extension on the last lap to take 3rd place again – absolutely stoked.

It was awesome pushing myself hard in that race without any ‘real’ pressure – I found I was scraping my knees a lot more than race 1, despite it being a lot wetter. Good fun.

Big thanks to the Vic Club for a very well run event - and all the marshals who stood in the rain so we could get our jollies.

Thank you again to my supporters below, my wife and pit mates.