Easter Buckets Kaitoke
After a pleasant drive down from Auckland to Alicetown we met up with our gracious hosts at their place and settled in for a few quiets, Pizza and bike racing DVDs on Friday night, the biggest concern for the weekend was the possible crap weather to come, thankfully this didn’t really eventuate and we headed to the track bright and early Saturday morning with a few light showers possible.
At the track there was a rather large queue of cars waiting to get in the gate as the guy with the key had run out of petrol on the way up, which gave everyone time to have a relaxed chat and eat race pies for breakfast.
Once in the gate, grab a pit shed, unload and walk the track. For those that haven’t been to Kaitoke you really should make the effort, the surface is great, with everything from fast sweepers to the worlds tightest corner at Chicago, it is also wide enough to allow plenty of lines through most corners and the way it is laid out with elevation changes up the hill gives a great view of pretty much the whole track from the pits.
Numbers were good enough to run A, B, and C grades with a good turnout in each class and good hard racing in all grades throughout the day. Watching Rich and Fishy leaning on each other hard in corners as they came past was astounding, even more impressive when you consider that they had started half a lap behind the rest of the field and still carved their way through everybody else in the 10 lap races. Down in the mid pack where I was wobbling around things were almost as hard fought with four way battles between, Malcolm, Simon, Adrian and myself but a fair bit more polite. The fact that the bike that Mihi was going to ride wasn’t running properly and she ended up on mine in the C grade gave me a bit of extra confidence to push hard from the start as there was heat in the tires from the minute I rolled onto the track for warm up. I would try and write some race reports for the day but there was so much racing that the details have all blurred, all I can remember is that there was lots of it and it was all close and hard fought.
Later in the afternoon the promised drizzle came in and slowly made the track slipperier as time went on, things were getting interesting grip wise in the last A grade race and the B grade had it worse with the track getting more treacherous by the minute, after a three bike pile up on lap one the race was red flagged and the meeting called, by that stage everyone had had enough racing for the day. With the amount of track time and the fact that everybody had someone to battle with, the whole field was buzzing with the possible exception of Detlev who had been shipped off to Hutt hospital with a suspected broken collar bone.
Van loaded we headed back to Alicetown via the Hospital to show Grant where to collect the walking wounded, Detlev was in surprisingly good spirits having been told that nothing was broken but he had damaged his AC ligaments.
Out for dinner at the local Pub (The Parrot if I’m not mistaken) for a great meal and a few beers with out hosts and Dave T. Since we weren’t camping at the track the now traditional evening track walk wasn’t possible so after some debate about track layout and rules, a round of Kaitoke the board game was won by Helen after a shortened race distance of five laps.
Sunday
The weather wasn’t looking as bad as expected but everyone was feeling a tired and sore after a huge amount of track time the day before and this combined with the threatening rain may have been the reason for the lower numbers on Sunday. I wasn’t all that motivated myself but rolled onto the track for the last two laps of practice to see where the damp spots were only to find that the track was remarkably dry.
Race one, best start I’d had all weekend then hit neutral on the upshift and went backwards, fast. Slotted in behind Adrian and rode as hard as I had all Saturday and chased him for ten laps hoping he would make some sort of mistake, as there was no other way I was getting past. Unfortunately the only time he made any sort of error I had cocked up the previous corner and was too far back to capitalize.
Race two, I rolled up to the grid and nobody seemed to want pole, suits me fine and when the flag dropped I managed to slot in behind Caleb Adlam and hound him for the entire race, the only other bikes I saw were Adlam senior coming through and then backing off again playing around with no real competition on the day and Hamish who slid on past later in the race. Crossed the line about six feet behind Caleb having found no way past him and with no errors on his part for me to capitalize on.
Race three again nobody seemed to want the front row grid positions so I grabbed second on the grid with nobody on pole until Malcolm turned up at the last minute. Flag drops and I managed to grab the holeshot. Since I always seem to get crap starts I couldn’t believe it and leading a race was a completely new experience for me. I was expecting to get monstered by Andrew A and Hamish at any minute and rode harder and faster than I ever have, pushed along by the fact that I could hear Mr Murphy behind me the whole way and knowing that he would stick it up the inside if I showed the slightest sign of weakness. About lap three a light rain began to fall but with the sound of an FXR breathing down my neck behind me I wasn’t prepared to let up, three laps later Andrew A came past me for the second time at the end of the back straight having been by once before and then backed off again, this time he promptly fell off the tires and slid into the grass. I should have taken this as a warning about the deteriorating track conditions but kept pushing as I was more worried about the following traffic, this bit me two laps later when both ends let go at once in the left hander after Chicago, and the bike slid three feet sideways on tires and knee before the whole thing got away on me and we parted company for a gentle skid across the track and into the grass. I got the bike picked up and started again and did another couple of laps before pulling in since I couldn’t get my head right after the crash and had lost all confidence in the grip on offer. Back in the pits Hamish told me that things had been getting a bit sketchy for the previous two laps and he had decided to let me make a mistake instead of cleaning us both out, the right approach as it turned out.
At this stage the meeting was called as it looked like the weather wasn’t going to improve and the track was likely to stay a skating rink so we packed up, said our goodbyes and headed home.
A huge thanks to Malcolm and Helen for convincing us to come down and putting us up for three days (and putting up with us for three days) as well as Skunk and all the others that put on an awesome weekend. If you haven’t been to Kaitoke you need to make the effort at some stage, the track is absolutely brilliant and the people are as good as bucket folk everywhere. If we could only make one away trip a year it would be to Wellington despite the 8 hour drive each way, I’ll be booking annual leave for the October round of the NI series as soon as I get back to work.
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Originally Posted by Henk
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