Well, im not a big one for long race meeting reviews, but for the first time in 20 plus years of sidecar racing, ive had enough fun to want to share, so here I go.
Having loaded the bikes into containers at Service Engineers depot in Auckland at the beginning of March, we had a break from working on sidecars for a month, which was much needed.
Travel & accomodation aside, we arrived at the track on Friday morning to perfect conditions & prepared the machines for the day.
Scrivy & I decided to skip Friday practice as usual & instead concentrated on helping to get Tracey's pink 600 sorted out, which i'll let her share herself later on.
So nine Kiwi teams settled themselves into the ample & well appointed garages & worked together like a well oiled machine all day.
Friday night we had a meet & greet in a large corporate suite above the garages, & heard from the likes of Mal Campbell, Robbie Phyllis & Graeme Crosby, had a fair number of fine bevvies & retired to our motel bar which overlooked the track, with a number of other competitors from all over the place.
Saturday dawned fine & calm & after a very different sort of riders briefing to the kiwi way, F1 sidecars were first to qualify.
We had a couple of brand new tyres on (too tight to buy three) & having never been there before, the first lap was a quick sighting, & with blind brows & hidden corner entries, I sure wasnt going to crack this one in the first lap. Scrivy however had other ideas & by the time we got to the start finish for the first time he was cracking on big time!!
another super fast sighting lap & I have to admit to letting out a bit of a dismayed croak as we launched over the blind brow into the entry of turn seven, but around we went, much to my infinite joy!!
Lap three & Scrivy was hauling arse & completely by default, so was I.
we got baulked a couple of times by slower outfits & thought we'd poke it around for another lap to be sure of a reasonable grid possy.
we went up the inside of a long bike around 6 & over the brow into 7 were flying up to take another one on the short downhill to the rh hairpin when the guys we were about to pass went sideways & upside down in about half a second flat.
The rider, a pleasant young Aussie chap, was trapped inside & i watched as he slid under the machine downhill & backwards from 120kmh & I thought he was never going to stop.
We were past by this time & raised our hands, as we knew that was qualifying done. The crews from the two following outfits stopped & tipped him over & he hopped out.
The swinger was KO, but is going to be fine.
We returned to pits & to a few relieved faces that thought we were involved.
Scrivy & i speculated on our time & grid position, while the time sheets were being prepared, he thought we would probably be about 9th & I rekoned it would be more like 7th.
When a runner returned to pits with the times, we were stunned to find we had qualified 4th, 4 seconds behind the current & last year champ & runner up.
I cant really remember much about the first race, suffice to say it was a full blown rush, especially turn one at around 200k & my old favourite, turn 7 that just never stopped me from packing my undies all weekend. We quickly established ourselves in 4th position with 21 outfits behind us, with one snapping at our heels all race long, but we managed to hold him off & finish in 4th & first short bike home.
Race two was a fairly similar affair, with the previous race's fith placegetter swapping positions with us a few times, but a big effort in the last half lap saw us come home 4th again, a second a lap quicker than the first attempt.
Saturday night we (team kiwi) headed up the road in the rental vans to Darryl Rayners place, an F2 sidecar competitor & all round top bloke whos competed out here a few times, for a barbie complete with 'roo steaks, had a feed that couldnt be beat & headed back to the Motel for an early night (I know WTF?)
Sunday turned out to be another cracker weather wise, & we cranked up the pace a tad more in race three & didnt see the bloke that had been hassling us the previous day at all after turn two. A fairly un eventful race (apart from packing my undies into turn 7, which became quite fun), we notice Chris & Ritchie Lawrence parked up on the exit of turn one on the second lap, & if they want to explain why, then thats up to them, my lips are sealed.
Race four, & we got a blinder off the second row & hit turn two in 3rd place, with the Aussie #1 plate (P Jacobs) bearing down behind us, with Andre Bosman & Dave Kellet, Shane Soutar & Jeff Rowe in front.
We managed to hold him off for two laps, until he grunted us off down the front straight & slowly disappeared.
We had no pressure from behind to speak of after that, so backed off a bit to allow us the luxury of some huge wheel up slides & a bit of playing it up to the crowd, to make sure they got what they paid for.
Another 4th place.
We quickly packed up the garages & headed over to the containers & had everything in & tied down in just over an hour & off to the prizegiving for a few well earned XXXX (thats aussie for beer) & a yarn with the locals, all good bastards without exception!!
Enjoyed Monday exploring a bit of Sydney & flew out late in the arvo.
Woke up this morning & proposed to Tracey over a nice breakfast out, & she accepted. Sweet as!!!
P.S our best lap time was a 144.1 which makes us the fastest kiwi sidecar team ever around Eastern Creek.
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Originally Posted by sidecar bob
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