Hey Guys,
Timaru turned out to be a weekend of a good beginning and slightly frustrating ending. Though the overall championship position hasn't changed at all, the gap to Dennis has increased, but we are still focussed on bringing it back down!
WEDNESDAY PRACTICE:
On Wednesday we headed out to the track to grab a little bit of practice before the majority of people got there. Dennis and his team Triple R Racing were there though, which certainly was going to give us a good basis for our pace for the beginning of the weekend. We spent the morning focussing on basic bike set-up, on old tyres. We were keeping an eye on Dennis, and had seen that he had fitted a set of sticky new tyres and gone out to try to put some good laps in. We went to the wall and watched, and he looked ragged! It didn't look like he had much left, and he did three laps in what we timed as low 1:07. We did something similar, fitted new tyres and went out to try and set a fast time. I was dead set on doing a 1:06, but when the timer flashed up with a 1.07:000, I took it as a sign that a 6 wasn't going to happen, and packed up, feeling confident that I had been as fast as anyone on the day.
FRIDAY PRACTICE:
Friday morning dawned wet, raining and miserable. The forecast for the weekend was ever improving weather so I was happy to just sit and watch what other people did. Brian Bernard's boys went out and Dave Sadowski fell, injuring himself and majorly slowing himself for the weekend. Otherwise nothing remarkable happened with the 600s. Later on in the day, the weather cleared and the track dried. With Hamish now down from Wellington setup progress was rapid, and although we only got in two sessions, we made plenty of progress for the remainder of the weekend.
SATURDAY PRACTICE AND QUALIFYING:
The two practice sessions were again uneventful, we were ducking in and out of the pits changing little things and were soon all set for the qualifying session. Qualifying started well, I set a 1:06 on my first flying lap, and on seeing that thought "this is going well...." Over the session I did three 1:06s, and a 1:07:0, getting pole by 0.37 seconds from Dennis and doing four laps under his best. We were well pleased, this was my first pole in 600s and it was surprisingly very easy. Pole was nice, although we knew it was the races that really counted and were hopeful of being able to go faster again on the Sunday, as we were sure that Dennis would be able to.
SUNDAY:
Race One:
My start was...not as good as my usual standard. I ended up third into turn one, but I passed James Smith down the back straight on the first lap. On the second lap, Matt Sadowski powered past down the back straight. He was at this point going a second a lap faster than he qualified so he can clearly pick up lots of time quickly, either with the right mind-set, or by following us around and just going as fast as we do. I kept my head down and stayed close for the first seven or so laps, but had a couple of big slides and lost seconds in traffic, so kept an eye on my board and maintained the gap back to James in fourth. Finished third and although it was a podium, it wasn't as high as we had wanted starting the race.
Race Two:
A small change was made to try and increase my exit grip for this race. The start was much better, although both Dennis and Matt got a great jump off the line and beat me to the entry of turn one. I kept right with them for the first four laps, setting my fastest lap of the race on the fourth. Unfortunately, my front tyre started chewing up (in hindsight down to my desire to have the front of the bike heavy for the long slow corners at Levels) and sliding, and I was still holding Matt's pace, Dennis had gone away. James put in a really good pass on about lap seven, and I was thrown out of the seat trying to move back past later in the lap. At this point I was having problems with both ends of the bike. I kept the pace as fast as I was able, and kept the gap to James and Matt down to within a couple of seconds until right at the end of the race, but I was unable to pull them back in towards me. I finished this race fourth.
Although the weekend didn't have the finishes we had desired, it had its highlights in other points. Thanks to Hamish and Dad's hard work on the bike we were able to secure the first pole position for Museum Hotel Racing in the 600SP class, and we maintained our second position in the championship standings.
Big thanks to my sponsors Museum Hotel, Continental Tyres, Kawasaki NZ and to Hamish Laing and the rest of the folk at Darbi Wellington for putting up with the extra workload.
Cheers,
Jay #37
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Maido
Bookmarks