I had heard stories, I had been given tips by people with first hand experience, but nothing can prepare you for a Mothers Motorcycle Club all-comer's race.
Grid positions are determined by a sprint during the warm up lap ( as far as I can tell, no one actually said what the procedure was ). The front row was the entire width of the track with as many bikes as you can jam in without actually touching. In the interest of preserving my shiny new bike (and my wrinkled old hide) I opted for the wimp approach of starting at the back at row three, which only had about 6 or 7 bikes in itand I thought would be less risky. I was wrong I was hit HARD by someone (on an Aprillia I think) who charged through from behind somewhere, we both did a big wobble and headed for the traffic jam at turn one. When I say traffic jam I mean almost the entire width of the track was covered in bikes going so slow that I could cruise round the outside of most of them. I have no idea what it was like for people in the front row, I never saw them after the flag dropped. After about half a lap the field had sorted itself out a bit and I actually ended up racing with a few people with a bit of position swapping and I was having fun and getting a bit of a feel for what the 675 can do on the track. For all the subsequent races I decided that I would not bother trying for a first or second row position so started all my races from the back, kept out of trouble and worked my way up the field until I was racing and had a fun day. My only regret was that I missed out on one race I could have been in at the end, I guess a fair few people made the same mistake I did and thought the day was over as it was the smallest field of the day (except for the ladies race which Flame won by half a lap).
It was a fun day with lots of races (only 4 laps each).
I never thought I would say this but the Harley races where Awesome !! 40 Harley's of every configuration (including a full dress'er !!) and about 3 Buell's going balls out. The first race was Buells first and second which is how I would have picked all the races but the second one I watched a big bore Harley had the lead from start to finish and one of the Buells ran off the track at turn one trying to get past him. There was pretty close racing down through most of the field as well.
The classic racing was more of your "conservative" (if you can use that term about motorcycle racing - maybe I should be "conventional" ? ) Anyway it was what you would expect to see with classic racing - bloody good.
Katie and I decided that we would not go to the after match function, I had been up until midnight fitting crash knobs and doing an oil change and Katie was due at the Dojo on Sunday morning.
A couple of notable observations, guy's racing without gloves, following a speed triple with the rider wearing jeans and displaying his bum crack, the uncovered ends of a "pack rack" sticking up from the bikes rear . I had visions of being impaled on them if he crashed in front of me as he locked up the rear going into Higgins,
Was it fun HELL YES
Will I do it again HELL YES
I recommend that anyone who is remotely interested in Motorcycles check this out. If your bike is BEAR's give it a whirl, if not come and watch it is something else !!
Reply With Quote
SPONSORS OF Paul Dobbs ON THE FLYING DUCATI'S 749R & 999
Originally Posted by johan
Bookmarks