Nicksta’s VMCC 08 Round 4
No test day the day before, Frenchy and I cruised down to Bulls Friday night. My memories of the long track were not too fond as it was wet last year and it just never clicked for me. After a conversation with Paul about each corner of the extension, I had a plan in my head to put last year’s effort behind me and aim for a repeat of last round… if it was raining, fingers crossed!
Schedule was for 2 races of 6 laps. At briefing it was shortened to 4 laps a race to accommodate the motards who wanted full track also, fair enough, but you’ve got to wonder if the long track is worth the expense for 8 race laps? Word had it it should have been raining by shortly after briefing. My source wasn’t too far off and boy did the heavens open up! Plan was to qualify better than last round to give me a shot into T1, as the sprint races at 4 laps didn’t allow much come back for mistakes or bad starts.
Scrub session was chocka as everyone was out to check out the extension. It seemed wider than I remembered but much less daunting, sweet! 2nd lap a certain Mr Cole flew past as I entered the extension so I tucked in to follow his lines and I was pleasantly surprised how easy they were and seemed pretty smooth and close to my game plan
Post Classic Jnr Practice/Qualifying:
With a wet meet called, my plan was to go hard for 3 laps and qualify much better than last round’s 6th row effort in the wet. Light rain falling we head out. I’m comfy on the ShowerBuddy CBR and steadily increase my pace on the first lap. Seeing Stevie up ahead in the 2nd lap I put the pace on, I feel the back sliding coming out of corners but they are controllable. I pick up the pace and find both tyres sliding round T1 and T2 bit scary but I could feel what the bike was doing and knew the slides were manageable. I find myself almost laughing half from nerves but the rest from totally loving the rain, as it was a rush to challenge myself to go faster while control the bike just enough. Result a 2:47.4, not bad considering I was running the GPR A10’s. I was 10th on the grid, 3rd row was a huge improvement on the 6th row of last round.
F3 Practice/Qualifying:
Hoping to repeat my qualifying effort, we rolled out on to an even wetter track. More rain falling and it was getting interesting. After playing a bit I catch Clive in the big left of the long track and wave him to follow. I give it a bit more and hope he sticks, after a lap he’s still there, sweet! I speed up and coming up to the entrance back to the short track I see a bike plow through a huge puddle that’s building about a meter into the track and plan a course in the middle of the track to avoid it. The surface water is getting bad and I’m happy to see the flag. Stoked to see Clive gain leaps and bounds in confidence, well done dude! I qualified with a 2:27.4 putting me 6th again on the grid, yay 2nd row and a vast improvement on my previous PB of 2:30.9 from last year
Unfortunately the meet was called off before we all got out to race. I didn’t blame VMCC at all; watching the car drive through the foot deep puddle covering the entire width of track from T1 through to T3 was scary. Big thank you’s to the VMCC organizers and volunteers for putting the event together and braving the conditions to wave flags at us all morning, you guys rock!
Big thank you to Paul, Dianne (Justine, great to see ya!) and Team ShowerBuddy – the CBR was a trusty steed in the wet, sorry I managed to still scrape off some fairing Paul, also big thank you’s for the work you did on Tweety since last round, she feels like a new bike! Dave and Donna at Kiwibike, thank you so much for your ongoing support. Big ups to Dunlop Tyres, Bikestore.co.nz and Future Grafix. Last but not least, my partner in crime, Frenchy… thank you for all your help and support.. you rock babe!
Even though we didn’t get to race, I had a great day and made some big improvements on the long track in terms of personal goals. I don’t know what I didn’t like about it last year and I’m stoked it all clicked on the day. Can’t wait for the 2-day event and the business end of the series
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you continue to impress in the wet!! and even tho we both never got to race, we did have some fun on the way home up the mountain!! 
Originally Posted by Big Chim
challenge out for the next round too . hmmm should be a fun garage 
to hang out in for that round i recon.
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