Well the day had arrived. Twelve weeks of anticipation had come to the climax and my new bike was ready to race. It arrived the week before from Japan and was well worth the wait. My 2001 RS125 was here and today was to be used to get used to the bike a little and make sure there wasn’t any issues with it.
As always a new bike’s first outing always brings the rain and right on cue Christchurch pissed down all Friday night. I woke on Saturday morning to see overcast skies but no precipitation was falling. I arrived out at the track to get setup around 9:30 and got sign in out of the way. It was only a small CAMS meeting and I was entered in the moderns class, I also bought my bucket along for a bit of extra fun, my main focus was on the 125 though.
The first practice session came around and I had decided that it was too dry for wets and kept the slicks on. It probably was the wrong decision but I just took it really really slowly, I didn’t want to drop my new baby within the first 10 mins of riding it. The track was very slippery and I had a couple of un-nerving slides, but nothing too major. The session was over fairly quickly and I was happy with how it went.
The next session was the first race. On the warmup lap I could see that the track was probably about 50% dry with a fairly consistent dry line around most of the track. I got a fairly good start, the later model bikes has a lot of extra down low torque so they are a bit easier to launch off the line. I was about 5th going into the first corner and just made sure I didn’t do anything too ambitious. I used the extra power to go past a few of the bikes and settled in behind a KTM motard for the rest of the lap. I thought about trying to ride around the outside on the infield sweeper but decided not to seeing the fairly wet track off the racing line. I passed him coming out of the dipper but then missed a gear coming onto the main straight. I managed to keep ahead of him having just a fraction more top end. I stayed ahead for the next 3 laps and managed to bring it home 3rd, behind a CBR1000 and another 125, the KTM was about half a second behind me. I was pretty happy with that.
The next race went pretty much the same as the first, I managed to pick the motard off and stretched the lead out more comfortably this time over the motard, bringing it home 3rd again.
The 3rd race was a bit strange. I got a good start off the line and let the clutch out just a fraction early which made the engine bog. Normally this isn’t a major problem but for some reason the engine wouldn’t rev any higher. Thinking something was wrong I pulled off at the end of the front straight and went down the slip road back into the pits. I tried another launch down here and the bike revved out in the first three gears. So I went straight back out onto the track out of the pits and after loosing probably about 1 min I managed to pick up the last couple of guys. Nothing too much to be dissapointed about, I think it was just setup a bit rich as the temperature had increased slightly as the day went on, my det counter also only counted 2 det’s so that would tend to agree with the thoughts of rich carburation.
There was only 1 race left in the day and by now the sun was very low and the temperature had dropped slightly. I decided not to modify the jetting so left it as is. I got a pretty good start with TonyB being first into the first corner followed by Mr KTM motard with me 3rd. The KTM passed Tony fairly quickly and I passed him into the hairpin. I caught up to the motard during the rest of the lap and tailed him down the straight planning a move into the first corner. I wasn’t sure if I should try the pass up the inside or outside of the first corner but I decided to go down the outside. As I got closer to him he just kept going wider and wider until it was too late. He gave me a small nudge and I had no option but to take it to the grass. Thoughts were going through my head of a repeat of what happened at Manfeild nats and I was determined not to let it happen again. I made sure I let off the front brakes and just gradually pulled them on till I was at a complete stop. I pointed back for the track and gave it a bit of a handful of throttle and had the rear step out on me. Not to worry. I got it back on track and was pretty far down the field by now. I passed the old shitters (like kickaha and diesel pig were riding) and got back into 2nd place with too far a gap to close to the motard.
All in all it was a pretty good day, just getting settled and used to the new bike. Can’t wait for 2 weeks time at Teretonga, the 2nd round of the South Island cup.
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Originally Posted by RG100!!
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