Snetterton Round 9 and 10 1oth and 11th June 2006

Friday testing

Well we finally got the bike going correctly and I have almost fully recovered from the broken bones suffered at brands. The bike ran perfectly throughout testing although having not used the bike as yet we were lacking engine and ride set data. We used every test session to gather data and see what response we got from the bike with different settings. The cougar logger is a great tool and the whole team were well and truly impress by the data we had from it. We quickly dialed the bike into give some satisfactory power and safe running conditions.

I got to grips with the bike quite quickly which I was very surprised about considering my lack of track time. This was effectively our first meeting and by the end of Friday we were already into the 1m14’s which was more than we expected.

Saturday

Saturday, very hot!

1st Qualifying

Saturday first qualifying didn’t go quite as well as planed… I pulled out of pit lane and accelerated toward the first corner and all seemed ok. Then half way down the back straight the bike dropped a huge amount of power.

As it was qualifying and the logger was not flagging up any dets on my on board indicator I decided to give it another lap to see what happened. Unfortunately the bike just wouldn’t pull and I had to pull in. there was not enough time to resolve the matter for that session so we set about stripping parts from the bike to find the fault. Luckily it didn’t take long before one of us spotted that the power valve linkage had come away from the bottom cylinder and so was not opening. It must not have been tightened correctly from the previous nights strip down. Anyway we corrected the fault made a few carburetion changes anyway due to the change in conditions. Then it was up to the dyna pro dyno to check all was well. We matched our data along with the lamda data mark had and decided to make some more changes. A couple more attempts on the dyno had the bike running spoton.

2nd Qualifying

Second qualifying and the bike felt great. I didn’t have anyone to gauge my pace on but the lads were doing a great job with the pit board. I got myself up to 5th but was bulked on the last lap and ended the session 6th and middle of the second row with a 1.13.5. Good enough I thought.

Super pole Race

Qualifying race and I just realized that I hadn’t had a practice start on the bike, oh dear. We got a pretty bad start and I was about 9th into the 1st corner. A race long battle then commenced as I tried to get myself back on terms with the front runners I pulled myself back up to 6th and was battling with Barry Utting and Rich Grinlin it wasn’t until the last lap that I was comfortable to make a move and as I was about to go up the inside of Barry in the esses he passed Rich which left the door open for me. I went through but lost some time on Barry and ended crossing the line I 5th just in front of Rich.

Sunday

Saturday being very hot and we struggled with grip due to the heat. The track surface felt very slippery and Sunday was going to be even worse.

Warm-up and the bike felt good so we made a few tiny changes to the carburetion and decided to put some new clutch plates in for the main races…..

Race 1

Race 1, biggest mistake of the weekend was changing the clutch plates, for some reason the bike would not pull away and the clutch just would not grab. I got off the line dead last and a good 20 yards behind the last runner into the 1st turn! Bugger. I was so angry with myself that I was making stupid mistakes trying to claw my way back up to the front. I was up to 7th by mid race and was behind Matt Doughty. I decided to take him into sears and opted for good drive out of riches to do it. I got the good drive and pulled to the inside ready to out brake him. Not sure if he saw my front wheel or not but he kept moving over to the left and I was about to have my nose cut off. Ok it was a bit of a lunge but I’d committed and couldn’t change my mind now……. CRASH. I lost the front end at the apex and took Matt down with me unfortunately. He was pretty annoyed and a few choice words were exchanged before the marshals took us our separate ways. I later apologized, as I was clearly frustrated and trying to make up too much ground too early.

Well between the races we had some serious work to do on the bike. There were 6 of us at one point all working on different parts of the bike to get it ready in time. Even our title sponsor Mark Dent came and did a grand job on the pipes and brakes. We had the bike re scrutineered 15 minutes before the next race.

Race 2

Race two and I just prayed that the changes we made had fixed the clutch but as I pulled away on the warm-up lap it was evident that the fault was still there….
Another rubbish start and again I was 20 yards off the last runner in the 1st turn. This time I used my head and concentrated on picking them off slowly. 2 3rds into the race I was up to 6th and in a huge battle for second place. I was dicing with Chris Bishop (raining GP250 champion), Gary Baxter, Gary May for the remainder of the race and although there were a couple of opportunities to make a few more passes I played it safe as I figured Dyna Pro the team and sponsors would not be happy with another DNF. I was close enough to gauge what was going on and saw my drive out of Russells was better than most. I went for the draft across the line and sure enough I got 5th place from Chris Bishop by only 1 hundredth of a second. 3rd to 6th place were covered by only 3 tenths of a second it was a bloody close race and great fun. I got the second fastest lap in race 2 with a 1.12.80 only 6 hundredths of a second slower than the fastest set by the race winner Barry Utting.

The best bit about the weekend was that the bike handles exactly the way I like it, it shakes its head and moves around just like the rgv used to. There’s still loads more to come so when you consider we were only approx 1 second off the lap record I recon we’ll get some wins in shortly. I felt so comfortable on the bike and during the battle for 2nd I had time to calculate just how much time could be made up. There is loads more to come and we can’t wait for the next meeting.

Big thanks to Mark and Dyna Pro. Also big thanks to others that loaned parts and gave a hand.