I had a good day doing a bit of instructing down at the race school at Donington park yesterday. The weather was great all day, plenty of bikes to ride, as you can see. What more could you ask for ?
Thursday 23 April 2009
Show Them How Its Done
I had a good day doing a bit of instructing down at the race school at Donington park yesterday. The weather was great all day, plenty of bikes to ride, as you can see. What more could you ask for ?
Wednesday 22 April 2009
BIKESPORT NEWS AGAIN!!
Here's this weeks article from Bikesport News covering the rounds at Cadwell, Easter weekend. As usual, Alex gets most the limelight but I still get a mention, even if they did get it wrong! I had 4 podiums and not 3, if you don't mind Mr Editor! Still quite happy with having the fastest lap in a couple of the races though. It's a definite improvement over Mallory.Tuesday 14 April 2009
Two, Yes Two Championship Leaders
After an up and down weekend for myself (strange as it’s usually Leigh) both Leigh and I have found ourselves leading our respective championships in ThundersportGB (see www.thundersportgb.com). Leigh has an 11 point lead in the Minitwin class over Richard Wilshire and I have a 10 point lead over Rob Elsmere in the Junior Powerbike class.Leigh decided to do the practice day on Saturday to check how the bike was running after all the work that had been put in to it over the preceding week and although the day was a
washout and he only went out in a couple of sessions, this was enough for him to declare ‘its pulling like a train’. I took this to be a good thing!
On Sunday Roger of RMKD and his ‘new apprentice’ had come to watch and kindly brought his bike as a back up, just in case! But unfortunately this was not the day that we were to need it, more on this later!
Sunday came and I qualified fastest in my class, but the clutch was starting to slip between 13,500rpm and 15,500rpm. Therefore a quick strip down was required (the bike, not me) and a new clutch fitted in double quick time thanks to Roger’s new apprentice (see picture) ! The races seem to go a little too easy for us and we managed to bag two wins from two races. I did have some fun on the way as our cl
ass had been mixed in with the Supertwins (up to 1000cc V-Twins i.e. Ducati 1098’s, KTM 1190 etc) and I crossed the line 4th and 5th overall embarrassing a lot of the bigger bikes on the way who have up to 180hp as opposed to our 72hp.
Leigh came away from the two races with a 2nd and a 3rd in the Minitwins setting his own personal best fastest lap around the Cadwell circuit along the way. His main rival in the championship had fried his clutch and had to retire from the race allowing Leigh to claw bike a load of points. John King of JK Tuning had come down to watch and declared ‘that seems to be going alright’, which again we took to be a good thing.
On Monday I came crashing down to earth with a bang, literally, when in the first race I lost the front through the Gooseneck
on the first lap at approximately 80mph, right in front of the TV camera. Luckily I just slid along the grass but the bike didn’t fare as well as it grabbed in the dirt and flipped over several times doing a fair amount of damage as you can see from the picture. If only Roger had brought his bike on the Monday instead of the Sunday. Simon Hubbard from Strypz had come to watch and unfortunately one of the first things he and his young son, Oliver, saw was my bike cart wheeling through the air, I hope he could see his stickers as it spun round! Apologies to Birdy (happy in his winners hat the day before on the photo) for this one but I believe it was down to the tyres going cold due to the length of time we were held in the collecting area.
After stripping down the bike we realised it was too badly damaged as you can see on the picture and we thought we would have to give the last race a miss, but a big thank you to Kingsley Ruddy and his father who came to the rescue and loaned us their spare bike. We changed the wheels and the brakes ove
r from our bike and had the bike scrutineered ready for the last race. As soon as the race started I knew the bike was not running too well as it was very low on power, and I limped home in 7th place in class. My suspicions were proved right when I was surrounded by steam as I pulled in to parc ferme, this was traced to a blown head gasket. At this rate I will be getting a reputation as a bike breaker. The main thing was we managed to salvage some points and this has kept us at the top of the championship, so again thank you to Kingsley and his dad.
Leigh had another good day bagging two 2nd places in his class and with Richard Wilsher having another DNF this gave Leigh the overall championship lead, I think this even surprised him a bit.
A funny point was that Leigh’s boss, Stuart Norris had taken a ride down to Cadwell on his Triumph and brought along his camcorder, he finally realised it worked a lot better when you pressed the record button but only after he had spent most of the first race pointing it at the race but recording nothing.
You can see these races (and probably my crash) on Motors TV 27th April at 7pm.
On Sunday Roger of RMKD and his ‘new apprentice’ had come to watch and kindly brought his bike as a back up, just in case! But unfortunately this was not the day that we were to need it, more on this later!
Sunday came and I qualified fastest in my class, but the clutch was starting to slip between 13,500rpm and 15,500rpm. Therefore a quick strip down was required (the bike, not me) and a new clutch fitted in double quick time thanks to Roger’s new apprentice (see picture) ! The races seem to go a little too easy for us and we managed to bag two wins from two races. I did have some fun on the way as our cl
ass had been mixed in with the Supertwins (up to 1000cc V-Twins i.e. Ducati 1098’s, KTM 1190 etc) and I crossed the line 4th and 5th overall embarrassing a lot of the bigger bikes on the way who have up to 180hp as opposed to our 72hp.Leigh came away from the two races with a 2nd and a 3rd in the Minitwins setting his own personal best fastest lap around the Cadwell circuit along the way. His main rival in the championship had fried his clutch and had to retire from the race allowing Leigh to claw bike a load of points. John King of JK Tuning had come down to watch and declared ‘that seems to be going alright’, which again we took to be a good thing.
On Monday I came crashing down to earth with a bang, literally, when in the first race I lost the front through the Gooseneck
on the first lap at approximately 80mph, right in front of the TV camera. Luckily I just slid along the grass but the bike didn’t fare as well as it grabbed in the dirt and flipped over several times doing a fair amount of damage as you can see from the picture. If only Roger had brought his bike on the Monday instead of the Sunday. Simon Hubbard from Strypz had come to watch and unfortunately one of the first things he and his young son, Oliver, saw was my bike cart wheeling through the air, I hope he could see his stickers as it spun round! Apologies to Birdy (happy in his winners hat the day before on the photo) for this one but I believe it was down to the tyres going cold due to the length of time we were held in the collecting area.After stripping down the bike we realised it was too badly damaged as you can see on the picture and we thought we would have to give the last race a miss, but a big thank you to Kingsley Ruddy and his father who came to the rescue and loaned us their spare bike. We changed the wheels and the brakes ove
r from our bike and had the bike scrutineered ready for the last race. As soon as the race started I knew the bike was not running too well as it was very low on power, and I limped home in 7th place in class. My suspicions were proved right when I was surrounded by steam as I pulled in to parc ferme, this was traced to a blown head gasket. At this rate I will be getting a reputation as a bike breaker. The main thing was we managed to salvage some points and this has kept us at the top of the championship, so again thank you to Kingsley and his dad.Leigh had another good day bagging two 2nd places in his class and with Richard Wilsher having another DNF this gave Leigh the overall championship lead, I think this even surprised him a bit.
A funny point was that Leigh’s boss, Stuart Norris had taken a ride down to Cadwell on his Triumph and brought along his camcorder, he finally realised it worked a lot better when you pressed the record button but only after he had spent most of the first race pointing it at the race but recording nothing.
You can see these races (and probably my crash) on Motors TV 27th April at 7pm.
Thursday 9 April 2009
Easter at Cadwell
Both myself and Leigh are getting ready for a steady drive down to Cadwell tomorrow. Leigh is doing the practice day on Saturday, and both of us are racing on the Sunday and Monday, so if anyone fancies a day out, feel free to pop in for a cuppa tea ! I am out on Birdy's 400 again, he has had the motor checked today after it had a bit of a rattle from the top end at Mallory so fingers crossed things are ok. Thanks to Roger of RMKD has kindly offered his bike as a spare just in case. We've not had time to get the 440cc engine ready but that may be done for Pembrey. Hopefully the racing will be as close as it was at Mallory (see pic left) and we can get some good results. Leigh is hoping to get back on the podium again in the minitwin class now we have found the horses that were missing in his engine.Monday 6 April 2009
DYNO HELL
Well the bike was back at J K Tuning this Saturday. Unfortunately I had to work, so my stepdad Rob was nice enough to take the bike for me. As I mentioned before, I knew the bike had dropped some power after the crash at Brands but I wasn't expecting such a severe drop! Rob got to John King's about 0930hrs expecting to do a couple of dyno runs and be away. As soon as they got the bike on the dyno, Rob and John were shocked. 49bhp and the fuelling was all over the place! Originally the bike had 71.9bhp, so I had lost 22.9 bhp and couldn't believe it. In one respect, it means I rode exceptionally well at Mallory with such a power deficit but what could I have achieved with full power? It wasn't a simple job to get the power back either!! Rob and John spent the next 6hrs and 34 ( yes, 34! ) dyno runs to get the bike back to decent power, so now the pressure is on for a decent result at Cadwell as reward for their time and hard work. Thanks Rob and John for your help and patience, it really is appreciated.
Saturday 4 April 2009
The Wall
Just thought I would show you a couple of good photos from Mallory. I was just about scraping my shoulder on the wall at Shaw's hairpin every lap. On these ones you can see Steve Tomes getting it slightly wrong behind me, probably missed his braking point. Pictures are from www.pljphoto.com they cover loads of events so take a look.
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