Well it wasn’t the ideal race meet, but the one race that I did get in was a barrel of laughs!!
First I’d like to do the thank you’s:
Mum and Dad: As always, awesome!
The Vic Club and all the volunteers: It’s been said before, awesome effort and thank you so much!!!
Forbes and Davies for the Maxima Oil and Metzeler Racetecs, which were just plain awesome!!
Robert Taylor & Dennis of CKT: The fork, shock and damper were all back in time, and once in the bike were absolutely awesome!!! The changes made on Friday improved the bike even more, there was virtually no tyre wear and I can safely say I’ve never ridden a better handling bike than the one that I was on come Saturday
Steevie/Scracha: For driving the second half to Palmy on Thursday, and for changing your work schedule so that we could go down on Thursday. Much appreciatons!!
Nick/Mumbles: For a bed and a ride on your awesome new ZX10. I’ve got to race a thou’ one day!
Phil/SVS for all of the advice and tips relating to the R6.
And the many others!!
Friday Practice Day
Rocked up after getting to bed at 2.45am in Palmy. In a bit of a daze, pissed around getting the bike ready and eventually took to the track after lunch for a few sessions. Ended up cutting a little more off my PB without even trying, which was satisfying and a good sign for the day to come
Saturday
Couldn’t believe that it wasn’t pouring down or even looking like it after what the weatherman had said the night before…lying bastards!!! I actually had it in my head that I was going to get to try out my new wets, and was somewhat disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to…but no complaints were heard
F2 Qualifying
Went out and built in to it slowly. Got passed by Sketchy in to Dunlop and was like ‘sweet, time for a tow!!’. The power of the R6 kept me in touch down the front straight, and I used him to make me faster through turn one. Unfortunately a wobbling Steevie with a front wheel about to fall off got in the way through turn two and the lap ended up being a bit slow, but the one before was a 1:13.4 or so, which put me 4th on the grid. A screw up was later revealed and I was relegated to 5th, but still happy with it.
F1 Qualifying
Wasn’t too fussed and wanted to save my energy for later. Saw on my lap timer that I’d hit the 13’s from the second lap and since I was coming upon traffic in the 3rd lap I just pulled off for a 13th spot on the grid.
F2 Race 1
Am still not really used to launching the R6 and got an only ok start. Came out of turn one in 6th and lost a place in to turn two…from memory Paul Dobbs on the Duc 749R. Lost a place to Marcus somewhere along the lap and then Jaime Rajek came by braking REAL hard in to turn one. I was starting to get a bit pissed with myself so decided to get in to it proper like. Passed Jaime out of Dunlop and then he came back up the inside braking big styles…a little too big styles and hit the deck, just clipping Marcus’ back wheel, sending them both in to the kitty litter, and me wide under brakes to avoid making it a threesome. I lost a few places from that and then scored some back. I ended up in a passing-fest with Paul Dobbs, Lee Bradford on the ZX6 and another, from memory. Eventually Lee dropped off just a little and it ended up being me versus Paul, who in fairness was just setting the bike up for Avalon and would whip my arse any normal day of the week. I did notice (in hindsight) that I couldn’t steam past him on the straights in the later laps like I could earlier on, which I thought just meant that he was giving it more but was probably a sign of things to come. I was so busy looking for a way past that I found it under a yellow flag and going hard on the corner where Wharfy had KO’d himself. Got a deserved telling off for not keeping a wider field of vision from Paul but went and saw him afterwards and all was good. Ended up 4th for the race (thanks to the likes of Nick Cole pulling in during the race), with a 1:13.00 on my lap timer and a 1:13.1 on the time sheets which I was very happy with considering the dicing going on, so 12’s were definitely on the cards which was my goal for the day!
F1 Race 1
The race that wasn’t! Coming out of the hairpin on the warm up lap I changed in to 3rd, gave it heaps and the revs skyrocketed. I backed off and continued on and things seemed ok. We sat on the start grid for a while waiting for everyone to tee up. Same old…lights out, slip the clutch…oops, didn’t realise I was giving it that much throttle, short shift to 2nd….suddenly heaps of revs, again in 3rd and the whole field is leaving me for dead. I put my hand up and limped back to the pits (first lap so no one behind).
It turns out that the clutch was not going to have any more of this abusive behaviour so I packed a minor sad, got over it, packed the bike up, ate junk food and started drinking red wine
Overall, still a great fun weekend with some nice, close dicing, and I set new PB’s most times I went out on the bike, but just wish I had more time to build on it. Always next time though!
Looking forward to the summer!!!!!
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Originally Posted by NinjaBoy
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