Brands Hatch Round 1 and 2 11th and 12th March 2006

Things really weren’t meant to work out for us at brands. It was one thing after another.

Firstly, Thursday afternoon we found that the front brake lines were weeping so we had to travel all the way down Mark Dent’s to fetch new lines that he kindly had made for us. We fitted them Thursday night in the paddock, finally finished at 2 am.
Friday first session and Craig from triple MMM racing came to give us a hand to get the bike ready. First time out and the first time ever on the bike and I had no problems. The bike felt fast and I was happy with every thing so far (apart from the freezing weather conditions).
I went out in second session and after first lap the bike made horrible barrb noise so I pulled the clutch in as I thought I’d seized it.
We stripped the bike and found the centre o-ring had burst on top cylinder and water was let into the cylinder and it blew the head off by stretching the studs and blowing off the nuts (hydraulic lock). ½ litre of water was in the exhaust and there was water in the cases.
We flushed water out of engine etc, rebuilt it and started.
I went out in next session (which was last one after the time we took checking everything) and the bike only reved to 8000 rpm and sounded bad. I pulled in straight away.
We worked all night on the dyno and on the bike. We thought we’d try it again in morning on the dyno.

Friday night Kev (Marks brother) fell out of the Dyno truck and split his head open, we since discovered he has concusion and is suffering from dizzy spells!

On the dyno in the morning we’d lost 25hp! Not good. The only way to find anything was to jet down to ridiculous sizes but even then it was 10hp down on what we had originally.
I went out in first qualifying in the rain. The bike started doing the same thing as soon as I exited pitlane (not reving past 8000rpm). I decided to give it another lap and by magic it cleared its self! So I thought enough was enough and I just tried to enjoy myself in the wet conditions. We Qualified 5th in first session and really the first time on the bike I was happy with that as I really wasn’t trying at all.
I came in from the session, put the bike in the awning and then my brother found the right fork seal had burst! Oil was all over the disc, wheel and tyre! There was nothing we could do that day so we decided that we’d try and ride with it as it was and find someone to rebuild the forks Saturday evening.
Then changing wheels to slicks and the rear wheel spindle threads stripped, we had to file our own to get it to work.
We decided to just ride with the damaged seal but I was very conscious of it. Went out in next dry qualifying session. It was very cold (3deg) the bike was sliding all over the place, I couldn’t understand it. I came in and found my brother had put 50psi in front and rear tyre!! We only normally run 32!

The super pole race and just before we went out (at 17.30 hrs!!) it started to hail. Everyone was on slicks. I got a terrible start as I’d never even tried a clutch start on this bike, when I got to graham hill bend some one crashed just in front of me, I tightened my line to avoid it but highsided in the process I ended up lying in the middle of the track and then watched as the following rider ran straight over me!
The weekend ended there, having now returned from hospital I can confirm that I have broken my arm in 4 places, broken two ribs and bruised everything else. I’ve been to see Brian Simpson and he’s said I’ll be out for 6 weeks so it looks as though we’ll miss Lydden too.

Things can only get better.

Big thanks to mark and his brother for helping out all weekend. Get well soon Kev!

Promising things that came out of the weekend were:

· The bike is fast and there is further potential within that too!
· The bikes handles exactly as I hoped, this is only the start and once we are up to speed we’ll call in Clive Horton to fine tune our setup.
· I know I can go fast on it, it filled me with confidence, the crash was just a racing incident and people should watch this space as we will be a force to be reckoned with before long.