After a... lengthy trip back from Invercargill the team and I arrived back in Wellington late (or early) on Monday evening (Tuesday morning), and it was straight off to work for another hectic day.But anyway, that leaves me to do this report now.
TERETONGA
THURSDAY:
At Teretonga we have no shortage of track time as the track is open on Thursday for a four day long meeting. The trouble usually is finding decent track time amongst the rain, but this year it was beautiful for us all weekend. We took time to get our pits fully set up while the only rain of the weekend hindered us, and eventually got out on track for the afternoon sessions, by which time it was sunny and beautiful. We made some minor adjustments to the bike and had it feeling a bit better, but not great. We played round with settings for the rest of the day, but were never better than about a second of the pace.
FRIDAY:
The timing wasn’t set up on Friday, which they normally do, so we didn’t have a proper comparison to what the day’s pace was, although we took other rider’s times throughout the day. My inability to find a compromise with setup left us struggling through the day, and over the course of the day I only improved my times by a few hundredths of a second, and the bike was tearing apart our favoured compound rear tyre, not helped by the 12 second long turn one.
SATURDAY:
In the first practice, we played more with rear shock settings, making some pretty big changes and making some improvements but nothing great. In both the morning sessions my times were my fastest, but again by very little more than before. I was ninth in the session before qualifying, which was very disappointing.
Saturday Qualifying:
I got out early in the session, and started putting times in. I felt good, but I could see the times weren’t coming with me. I pitted a few times to make minor damping changes to both front and rear suspension, and went slightly faster. Kept working my times and experimenting with lines throughout the session, but my best time came from early on. Disappointingly, this put me near the back of the second row of the grid for Sunday’s races.
SUNDAY RACING:
We made some massive changes to the bike from Saturday to Sunday, bigger than anything we had done all weekend and with both ends of the bike, which is quite a risk usually but we were desperate and trusted in Hamish’s judgment of the bike. I had just the three lap scrub to decide if I liked the bike better, and it showed how much Mishy really knows, as the bike felt stunning from the first lap. We were now all set to go racing!
Race One:
The start in this race was a mess... the starter held the flashing warning lights until the marshall was just off the track then hit the reds and had them out straight away, so myself and most of the grid were in neutral or not ready at all. Some people benefited from this, some lost time, I was pretty much in the same place I qualified. I jumped on the back of the lead group, and watched Dennis move through them, to take the lap record and the lead in just a few laps. Jason Hulme made a mistake in front of me, and I moved passed. I lost the draft from the lead group, and very rapidly dropped back. The rest of the race was uneventful, I kept my pace as high as I could to maintain my two second gap over Jason and finish in sixth place.
Race Two:
The start in this race was much more controlled. I got a good jump and was second into turn one on lap one, but ran in a little too fast, ran wide a lost a few places. I tucked in behind the group for second, as Dennis was gone. In this group was Matt and Dave Sadowski, Nick Cole, James Smith, myself, and Jason Hulme behind me. On lap three Matt crashed in the final corner (the elbow) and bumped me up to fifth. The wind had changed between races and we had noticed and made the right call on gearing, so our top end deficit was negated by holding the draft for longer and not running out of top end, making time back up when the other bikes hit their rev limiters. On about lap six Dave had a huge moment coming onto the front straight, and very nearly crashed it. I was able to easily move past, then draft behind James for a few laps. I made an out-braking move into the elbow, and moved up to third with about four laps to go. The following lap I got a good draft from Nick and passed him down the front straight. At the end of the straight I could see one of the back-markers and I decided I would go around the outside in the loop. I moved wide at the start of the corner but miscalculated and was wide too early. This left a gap for Nick to move into, but not actually pass...I thought. When he got into the gap, he moved wide and pushed me out into the very outside, dirty part of the track, which i tried to keep my speed up and ride through. Doing so I had a very long and large front end fold and push (the black mark off the front wheel was about 20m long) and nearly fell off controlling it. To anyone who has ridden a road bike lately, pushing a front tyre is very hard and dangerous and I considered myself lucky to ride away at all. Thanks must go to Continental’s fantastic front tyre, not many other tyres would let you get away with riding like that. Once I got control of the bike I moved back towards the racing line but James was looking for a good spot and bumped me back wide. At this time Nick had got around the back-marker and was heading for the exit of the corner. When he got there he gave it a big handful of throttle and the bike promptly spun out from under him and he fell. In all this confusion Dave picked his way through and gave himself a handy lead. James had to slow a little, but still got through almost scott free. Because of where I had been pushed to on the track, Nick’s bike slid in front of me and I lost a lot of speed and time avoiding it, maybe two seconds gap up to James. I think that was the busiest and most action filled corner I have ever been in! I put my head down and did nearly my best lap over the last two, but the gap to James was just a little too big and I finished fourth – still happy considering where we had been only that morning!
This leaves me sitting third in the championship, with a six point gap to James in front of me, and 20 points back to Matt behind me. We are now going into our home and best rounds, so we are looking forward to challenging even more in the North Island!
Cheers, Jay #37
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Originally Posted by Drew
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