Finally, after all the preparation and hard work over the last year, the team and I found our selves at Timaru for the first round of the NZSBK nationals run at Levels raceway. We had high hopes for the coming weeks as we set about our goal of winning the Pro-Twin championship. But with big expectations comes big pressure, something that I had been trying to prepare myself for over the last few months.
Our first day at the track was the Friday official practice day. We had a good pit spot setup in the same place as last year and got the bike ready for a busy day learning the track and setting up the bike. As soon as the bike turned a wheel on the track I knew the Manfeild base setup would not work here as I had a similar feeling to how the old bike felt during the previous visit here last year. I did a few laps to reacquaint myself with the track and pulled in to make some changes to the bike. Over the rest of the day we repeated this process but never really found a setting that promoted confidence in the front tyre, which is critical at any track but especially at Levels.
The next day dawned with the sound of rain on the roof but by the time we reached the track it was starting to clear up. According to the schedule our group would be up early so I opted to use wet tyres for the first practice session but, due to delays, by the time we went out on the track it was almost dry so I only did one lap to get a time just in case the qualifying session was cancelled.
Qualifying
The qualifying session was dry so no problems deciding on which tyres to use. I had a fairly good session this time, equalling my best lap time from the races last year with a 1:10.7 according to my onboard lap timer but I could tell that there were areas that needed improvement and so I would have to keep experimenting with the bike setup. In the end I was disappointed to see that my recorded lap time was only 1:11.0 to put me 2nd Pro-Twin and 8th on the grid. In hindsight, I think there were problems with the timing system as Mylaps shows three laps grouped together.
Race 1
I was not keen to change the bike setup too much without testing it before the race but I knew that local boy Johnny Small would be quick and that I was not going to be able to lap as fast as I would have liked. I decided to run with the same settings as in qualifying and see how it panned out.
I got a fairly decent start but from the back of the second row it was pretty much a case of follow the leader through turns 1 and 2. I was on Johnny's tail going into turn three but he got staggering drive onto the straight. I held my own over the rest of the lap but not really gaining anywhere only for the same thing to happen again at turn 3. I pushed a bit harder here this time but no matter what I did, I would just loose the front and have to back off. By lap 5, I decided that I would not be able to make up the gap and I was risking too much at my current pace so I slowed down a bit to make sure that I got second. Not long after this I saw carnage out of the corner of my eye and I came around the corner to see Terry's bike in the middle of the track. Sure enough the red flag came out not long after and we all filed into pit lane and were then told to return to our pits.
The race was restarted to complete our 9 laps and it played out pretty much the same as the the first part. I pushed at the start and then eased off to finish the race 2nd. I was not too disappointed with the result but I was a bit concerned to be one second per lap down on Johnny. I had set a new PB of 1:10.1 but I needed to be in the low 9s if I wanted to win.
After the race I was surprised to see that I had been classified as finishing second to last on the timing sheet. Up until this point, we had been having a string of problems and mistakes from the organisers, this combined with some appalling attitudes meant we were just about fed up with the whole situation. It was then that we were told that they could not guarantee that my result would be corrected! Fortunately there is such a thing as the Riders Rep at each meeting and he certainly earned his crust that weekend. I was reinstated to second place but informed that my transponder was faulty.
The next day Robert and I decided to change every spring in the bike to a stiffer option. Unfortunately the temperature was low and getting lower (contrary to the weather predictions) and this would not help my tyre wear.
Race 2
With high hopes of a bike transformed I set off into the first corner in a similar fashion to the previous days racing. Once again I was losing precious ground in turn 3 and in fact the bike was feeling worse in some areas! I lost touch with the leaders and had to settle for second place in Pro-Twins again. My lap times were over half a second slower on average compared to the previous day and once again my times were not being recorded correctly due to the transponder problem.
I checked the transponder for any problems but came to the conclusion that the unit must be faulty and there was not much I could do about it. That was the least of my problems however and I decided to pull out my fork internals to check for problems. Eventually we settled for increasing the compression damping on the emulators to see if this could be a cure.
Race 3
I was pretty much resigned to playing it safe in this race, which I really hate doing! As predicted, the bike wasn't great and in fact another step in the wrong direction I suspect with regards to suspension. Although I went slower in this race, so did everyone else for some reason but in the end, it was a fairly boring one to finish 2nd again.
Ready to put the weekend behind us, we headed down to Invercargill for round 2 at Teretonga.
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