Deciding to go racing using the bike you ride to work every day sounds OK when you say it fast. Wire up all the bits that require it replace the coolant, ride to the track take of all the bits that are not required and Roberts your mothers brother.
With the help of Clive Banks from Vic Club I managed to get my entry in for the winter series.
Katie and I rode the Hornet up to Taupo on Saturday and it was a very pleasant ride (if a bit nippy across the desert road) and checked into the Rainbow lodge.
We arrived at the track bright and early with the tank bag full of tools and racing numbers, manged the sign on without drama and started getting the bike ready. It turned out to be quite easy except that without a stand I had to find a convenient wall to lean it against ! I had a rough idea about the tyre pressure's from a couple of track days and had calculated that I would take about two minutes to do a lap.
Qualifying confirmed that and 2:02 put me on grid 16 for the clubman's race, I decided to lower my tyre pressure a couple of pounds more and nervously waited the first race. Having seen a few of the other classes start I knew how the lights worked and got a reasonably good start but no tyre warmers meant that my first corner was very conservative and heaps of bikes past me, my first lap was 2:02.
The bikes in front kept getting further in front and not wanting to look behind me (as per the riders briefing ! ) I thought I was last !! As the tyre's warmed up I really started to have fun and just when I thought I was starting to get the hang of it there was the white flag for the final lap, I managed that without incident and was feeling pretty good when I parked the bike. I must have had a big grin on my face as Katie got me to hold my hands out and sure enough there was the adrenaline induced tremor :-). I was keen to see what my lap times were and was really stoked to see 1:56.760 and even more stoked to see that I was 3rd in clubman's b !!
Seeing as how lowering the tyre pressure seemed so successful for race 1 I thought it would be a good Idea to lower it a fraction more for race two !! Well as I like to say at work when things go belly up, "it's not about apportioning blame, its about learning from the experience and moving on". By the time I had got from the dummy grid to the track entrance I knew I had gone too far the bike felt awful and I wobbled round the warm up lap wondering what to do. Well there was nothing to do except practice my start and keep out of the way at turn one, for the first couple of laps I nearly pooed myself at every corner and kept reminding myself that I had to ride home on this bike. I managed to complete the race but every lap except the last was in the 2 min. range.
I was very pleased to discover that I still managed to finish the meeting in 3rd spot for clubman's b.
Katie helped me put all the road going bits back on the bike and jumped on the back for the memorial lap ! We headed back to Rainbow lodge for the night and enjoyed a very pleasant ride back to Wellington today.
It was a great day we both had a fantastic time and everyone was really friendly and helpful. - See you at Manfield. :-)
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Originally Posted by Leong
. Thanks to Koba I now know where we met before. Go the Cliffhanger
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