Popped Down To Pembrey For Round 2

Hi all, well last Thursday we headed down to Pembrey, South Wales for the second round of the ThundersportGB GP2 Championship and the first round of the Supermono Championship. We were fully expecting to have some wind and rain ahead of us, how wrong could we be, amazingly we were blessed with glorious sunshine for the whole three days. Birdy and the Sisters actually had to don the sun cream as they were starting to glow a brighter shade of red with every passing hour.
Friday was a test day and the plan was to get the ZX4RR GP2 bike set up in the morning and concentrate on the Supermono bike in the afternoon as I had not yet ridden or even sat on the bike. But as a certain Robert Burns once penned ‘The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry’. Things at least did start out to plan and we took to the track on the ZX4RR, we took the decision to stay with the old suspension for this weekend as we had enough work to do with the Supermono. This was a good choice as after only three sessions and few clicks here and there on the forks and shock I was happy with the bike and so we fitted some new tyres, did a couple of laps to scrub them in ready for the next day and parked the bike up. This was when the plan started fall behind schedule a bit. Mick Smith (the good looking one of the sisters) had set off from Harlow, Essex in the morning and should have landed at Pembrey at around 1pm ready for the afternoon testing. After several hold ups the 4 hour journey had turned into an epic 8 hour journey and he arrived at the circuit just as practice was finishing. As you can’t turn the clock back we would just have to go straight out into qualifying on the Supermono and ‘suck it and see’.
Saturday morning came and for some reason I was quite nervous, as anyone who has raced a motorbike this is not an uncommon feeling and you do start to question your own sanity as to why we do this but the nerves were a little worse than normal. I put it down to the fact we had two bikes to race and one I had never ridden so just made myself get on with the job in hand. First qualifying for us was the GP2 class and so out on track we went, I managed a lap and a half before a loud bang came from the engine, I cruised to a halt at the end of pit lane where it became evident this was rather terminal. The conrod had snapped and excited through the rear of the crankcases. There was nothing for it but to take the 440cc engine out and fit our 400cc engine that we had waiting ‘just in case’. But this is not an easy or quick thing to do so Birdy and my dad got started. As we had only completed one flying lap of qualifying this left us in a lowly 14th place on the grid, not ideal but if we could at least get out there.
Whilst they were getting on with the engine change qualifying had been called for the Supermono’s so I pulled on my lid and set off once again. As this was my first time on the bike I took a few laps to get into the swing of it before I put my head down to get on with it. After about 6 laps entering the fast right hander at the Esses I went for the brakes and the lever came straight back to the bar, this was a pants filling moment but I managed to stay on the track and coasted around the next corner. I pumped the lever and it came back, not wanting to give up I tried again but it did exactly the same thing at the same corner next time around. I therefore pulled out of qualifying to see if we could find what the problem was. Again as we had only completed a few laps we were down in 7th on the grid, still not bad, but not too great either.
May be my nerves earlier in the day was more of a premonition, who knows?
My first race of the day was to be in the GP2 class and the guys were still finishing the bike as we were called to the grid. The Holdroyd tyrewarmers came off (do you like what I did there?), the bike fired up and off we set to the grid. I arrived on the grid to see my dad running towards me at full lick with a spanner and allen key in his hand to make sure the exhaust had been tightened, we didn’t want to explain to the nice guys at Delkevic that the can had gone bouncing down the road! Now you are not really meant to be on the grid at this point but thanks to the Thundersport guys for giving us the 30 seconds or so to do this. We completed the warm up lap and lined up on the grid ready for the start, the lights went out and off we went. I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed myself as I had to pass a lot of riders, some of these were good friends of mine and they did have a little moan later that some of the passes were ‘a little rude’ as they put it, and so the nickname ‘Rudeboy’ seems to have stuck! Still I put in a the fastest lap of the race at a 1.01.9 and managed to get a podium position in 3rd place nearly taking 2nd place on the line but losing out by 0.067s, not bad from 14th on the grid.
The sisters had got to work on the Supermono and it was decided to change the master cylinder to try and cure the brake problems. With this done we took to the grid for the race, I managed to get a pretty good start and settled into 5th place, still getting use to the bike I sat on the back of Mark Lawes for a lap or so but then entering the right hander at the esses again the brake lever came back to the bar once more, lady luck was shining down on us again and I managed to keep the bike on track but decided that ;discretion was the better part of valour’ and so retired from the race. This was very disappointing as I am sure we could have put the bike on the podium first time out but unfortunately this was not meant to be.
The second GP2 race was very similar to the first, and I managed to get the bike up into 4th place by the time the chequered flag came out. We set the fastest lap of the race again, this time improving to a 1.01.8 which was only .02s outside the GP2 lap record.
Sunday morning warm-up came and we went out on the Supermono after further changes to the bike overnight, after a few laps the brakes were still working fine so I decided to up my pace, this was when the problem reoccurred and at the same corner the brakes disappeared again. We made a team decision to pull out of the Supermono races as it was just not worth the risk.
We had a couple of great races on the ZX4RR taking a 2nd and a 4th in the two races, I had some brilliant battles with the Aprilia 450’s and some of these young guns are riding the wheels off them and I was having to push the Kawasaki hard to pass them. In the last race of the weekend we bettered our time from the previous day and did a 1.01.7 lap, this is actually the lap record for a 400cc bike around Pembrey so not bad at all.
Pippa was in charge of my pitboard this weekend and it was quite hard to read the board, we later realised that this was due to her cheering and shaking the board as I went past!
We now still hold 2nd in the GP2 Championship which considering the problems we have had is pretty good, unfortunately we haven’t scored any points in the Supermono Championship yet but we will hopefully put that right when we get to Snetterton on the 2nd/3rd May.
A lot of work needs to be done before Snetterton, rebuilding the Kawasaki engine and sorting the brakes on the Supermono but hopefully with the good support of the people around us we will get there.
Don’t forget to look out for the races on MotorsTV in the next couple of weeks.
Quote of the week form John Bird when he saw the hole in the back of the crankcases “that’s not good”. Slight understatement I think.