Gee there's some old boys lurking around this place eh?
Yep the old 98 CBR600 was a good bike. I should have kept it for a second season but had committed to the 919 and had to sell it.
At Teretonga in the Nationals in F2 I was running it on slicks and having a massive scrap for 3rd with Bruce Anstey on his TZ250, he would be on my arse into the last corner onto the front straight but because it was such a stop/start affair I would get the jump on him with the 600's torque. He would eventually get up into the slip stream and try to go up the inside into that Effing fast left hander off the straight but I would shut the door and it would start all over again! that was until the last lap when he dived up the inside there, seized the motor as he shut the throttle and highsided into my lap... needless to say the poor old Honda ended up cartwheeling through the gravel at 200k... messy!
Aaron Lovell and all the rest of the sidecar boys broke out the zip ties and duct tape and I raced the rest of the meeting, getting 2nd in 600 proddy for my efforts I recall. We celebrated by drinking a couple of bottles of the Filthy Fews home brewed Bourbon in the hotel spa pool then on to the prize giving where we made total dicks of ourselves, my mate/mechanic threatened the boss of Blue Wing for not helping or lending parts we needed even though we were the fastest Honda in the class... Oh dear... If I remember correctly I went to sleep in the shower fully clothed with it running on cold... We then went and stayed at my mates uncles farm in Ashburton while my mate in Hamilton laid up a new set of fairings in our molds over two days, posted them down, we sprayed and stickered them in a hay shed, then made it to Ruapuna in time for that round. Where I promptly Highsided it, had it land on me back with solid pegs and bust my kidneys... raced the rest of the day.... drove overnight to the ferry, then on to Hamilton where my mate dropped me at the front door of the hospital where I spent 2 weeks on me back! Oh the good old days... Why am I interested in getting another race bike again?

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