NZSBK Rnd 2 - Teretonga

After a somewhat disappointing weekend at Timaru, we decided to have a good think about how we could turn things around at Invercargill. It was decided that we would enlist the help of suspension guru Kerry Dukie from Duckic performance.

So the first day of practice at Teretonga started with a complete overhaul of the Suzuki's front and rear suspension. Kerry had some ideas and things started to make a lot of sense!

Buoyed by a feeling of a fresh start, I went out on the track and immediately shattered my best lap from the previous year. The bike didn't feel foreign but we were essentially starting to set it up from scratch so we didn't get to try everything we wanted over the two days of testing we had. Eventually, we found a good base setting and I was feeling confident lapping almost at lap record pace.

Qualifying
For this session I put on some new tyres but didn't get the most out of them getting stuck in a bit of traffic, while pitting to check tyre wear during the session. Despite this I put in a decent time of 1:05.3 to put me second on the grid with Johnny posting a blistering 1:04.6 to put him on pole.


Race 1
I got a good start for this race but ended up second after the first turn. I was following Kirk Pritchard on a faster bike and I thought this would work to my advantage but instead he was just holding me up. I tried to make a couple of passes but his bike was too fast at all the important passing spots. My pit board was signalling that we were getting caught by the following Pro-Twin bikes and I knew that if I could get past Kirk then I could pull a gap to 3rd. Unfortunately this was my undoing and with a lap to go I hydraulically locked the forks under breaking nearly sending me off track, allowing Robbie Stokes and Nick Southerwood past. I was furious with the situation but thought I could get them back on a last lap push but I was again held up by an F3 bike and lost any opportunity.

I ended up finishing 5th in this race more than a little bit frustrated with the situation! Funnily enough, the previous year had been very similar except that after a frustrating Saturday we had a pretty good Sunday so this cheered me up a bit.

Race 2
The next day started damp and ended up being very wet. The first race was going to be fully wet so I was a bit worried about not having had much success on wet tyres lately. Fortunately with a new set of Pirelli wet tyres I quickly started gaining confidence. This was basically like a test session for me just getting some confidence back in the wet conditions and I ended up finishing a comfortable second in this race.

The weather closed in for the rest of the day and they had to call an early end to the meeting meaning that we didn't get a 3rd race. I wasn't too worried as our pit shelter was about a foot under water and I was soaked all the way through so it was nice to go and have a shower instead.

NZSBK Nationals Rnd 1 - Levels

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.

Tri-Series Round 3

Tri Series Round 3 – Cemetery Circuit

Going into the last round of the series I was level on points with Deano for fourth place in the F3 championship and we both had a shot at 3^rd place depending on what went down (no pun intended).  My goal for this round was to basically just have fun and not worry about points too much. I still hold the view that this round should not have any points associated with it to remove some of the pressure from such a risky track.

Anyway, as with most racers, Xmas was a bit of a non-event and I spent the day getting packed and headed up the road to Wanganui to claim a pit spot, get signed in and scrutineered. I made sure to hold back from eating too much for dinner and restrained myself to only one glass of wine.

The next day was an early start so I was glad to have been mostly organised for the day before I had even got to the track. First on my list was to consult the Dr about suspension changes for such an extreme track. We decided to add oil and softer springs and see how it felt for the first session. Having ridden here last year I was not classed as being one of those pesky virgins who were first up.

Not long after, I was out in the F3 class for the first of the combined qualifying sessions. It took me a couple of laps to get back into the groove but by the end of the session I was feeling a lot happier and setting a fairly respectable 56.1 to put me 4^th in the session from memory. I was a bit shocked to see that Deano wasn’t taking prisoners setting a lap time quick enough to put him second. Better pull finger!

The next session I went out hoping to improve my time significantly but I ended up going slower. I was stuck behind a few riders during this session and I didn’t really get any clean laps ending up with a 56.5, which was irrelevant as they would take my time from the previous time to put me 6^th on the grid. I was relieved to be on the second row as a bad grid position could put an end to any high aspirations here.

Race 1

RT worked his magic on the front end to help make it more compliant for this race, which helped a lot in the braking areas.

We lined up for race one and I got a pretty decent launch to put me about 4^th into turn one. Deano got good drive out of turn two to put me back a place going over the rail tracks. Moments later I caught sight of a blue object out of the corner of my eye, Terry squeezing past into the same corner and running both of us very deep but fair enough. I clung on for the next lap but disaster struck when Jason went down just after the tracks and leaving Deano with nowhere to go but up, as he had to run into Jason’s bike. I was extremely lucky to avoid both Jason and all the carnage around me and get through unscathed. It is moments like these that you don’t know what to feel – the racer in me say’s that I just gained two places but I couldn’t help but feel bad that both Jason and especially Deano had gone down and this would probably spell the end of our battle for 4^th in the championship.

Unsurprisingly, the race was red flagged but fortunately both riders appeared fine as we lined back up on the dummy grid. I put all this to the back of my mind as we lined up for the restart and this time I got an even better one thanks to the empty grid spot in front of me. The usual suspects Scott, Glen and Terry got out into the lead and Scott especially was riding it like he stole it to clear off into the distance. I knew that I could hold onto 4^th if I put my head down but made sure not to out brake myself and throw away the gap I had back to 5^th place. Towards the end of the race I was pretty isolated from the other riders so I tried to ride as smooth as possible but as it turns out I was faster at the beginning of the race when I was riding ragged trying to keep up with Glen and Terry so I decided that smooth could kiss my arse for the next race. After the race I was stoked with a 4^th place finish and a PB of 54.7 but it felt a bit hollow considering my main competition was missing.

Race 2

I was glad to hear that Deano was for the most part uninjured and his bike was surprisingly well off considering it had ridden off without him in the first race.

We all lined up the dummy grid for our compulsory tyre cool down period and, after returning back to the pits to do the crossword, we were signalled to start our engines again and head off on the warmup lap.

Darn, no gap in the grid this time so a good launch was important. The first corner is a bit of a blur but I think I was about 4^th again going onto the back straight. This time I held on and stuck to the back of Terry and Glen while Scott checked out. To my surprise, as the laps ticked away, I was still sitting behind Terry and Glen. There were a number of places that they could pull a gap on me but I was more than determined pulling them back on the braking zones, with the bike handling the bumpy corner entries amazingly well. This was the first time in the Tri-Series that we had not made any significant setup changes between the races and it meant that I could bring my riding up to the level of the bike instead of trying to do the opposite.

Just as I was getting ideas of causing an upset and snatching 3^rd, I ran deep on the brakes at turn one and then again on the next lap at the exact same place. Those mistakes put an end to that and meant I had a 2 second gap to third. I was just pushing too hard and this had given me all the warning signs I needed to settle down and take home another 4^th place finish, which was fine with me. The best thing about this race was that I had smashed my PB and set a 53.2 lap.

Robert Holden Memorial

I was on a real high after the last race and was disappointed to have to wait another year to race here again just as I had hit my stride. So when I heard that I had qualified for the invitational race I jumped at the opportunity.

For some reason I had been gridded based on my fastest lap from race one, which was 1.5 seconds slower than race two and put me way back at 30^th on the grid. I wasn’t too fussed however so when the flag dropped and I found myself in the middle of 30 equally mad motorcycle racers heading for a narrow turn one I decided to leave them to it and file in behind. Last place seemed safe enough.

Everyone around me seemed to be running very similar pace with no one really making any passes. A small gap developed in front of the rider ahead of me so I passed him on the brakes and set about chasing down a swarm of 600 riders. I was definitely hauling them in on the brakes but would have to pass from a long way back to get ahead of any of them. Coming into the last lap I was braking as late as possible at the end of the back straight only for the front brake lever to come back to the bar with ZERO resistance. In that moment I was horrified but there was no time to do anything except stamp on the back brake. I effectively came flying into pit lane at top speed with the rear end fishtailing. After a couple of pumps the front brakes returned enough to slow me to a respectable speed. Before I had time to contemplate this life / death experience I was asked if I wanted to have my transponder removed!!! They must have thought I was a reckless lunatic but I was just happy to roll the bike into the pits all in one piece. As it turns out, one of the brake calliper bolts had completely fallen out leaving the brake pads to bite down on nothing but thin air. How this happened I’m not sure but I will now have a new ritual of checking those bolts every time I go out!

So it was a great days racing and the grid call ups aside, I think the organisers put on an excellent event and series. Later that night I picked up my prize money for fourth place in F3 overall but Geoff rode well enough on his first visit to the cemetery circuit to just secure 3^rd and take the weird helmet trophy thing. At least I can say that I did my best and apart from a top 3, I really just wanted to gear up for the nationals next month, which is looking good.

I had lots of supporters turn up to cheer me on so thanks to everyone who came and saw me in the pit to wish me luck. And of course a big thanks to my family for their support at all the rounds.

Obviously with suspension being so important there RT from CKT did an awesome job of getting the most out of the bike and without him I wouldn’t have been able to go fast (and probably would have crashed trying).

Also a big thanks to:

Pirelli tyres, which were insanely grippy and competitive through to the last race of the series

Brent Kennard (Kennard Collision Repairs) for the ‘sun shining out of arse’ paint job, which has made me really stand out

Simon Banks (Banks Engineering) for all his help and bike prep

Tri-Series Round 2

After seeing the forecast and the fact that I am quite familiar with Manfeild, I decided to miss the Friday test day. In hindsight, maybe this was not such a good idea.

Saturday morning was wet but warm and I had spent the night tossing and turning thinking about what tyres I would use in a multitude of different scenarios but as Qualifying got closer we ended up going with dry tyres, which was the right decision.

Qualifying
The organisers were running a fair bit ahead of schedule so it was a bit of a panic to get out in time and I hate being rushed before going out onto the track. I figured I could make do with a first or second row start so I didn’t push too hard in the dampish track conditions. I noticed that when I started pushing, the bike was not handling particularly well but I had put on a new Supercorsa SC1 rear tyre that felt awesome. To my surprise, I qualified 2^nd on the grid, just behind Jason Easton.

Race 1
We made a couple of small changes to the bike and set off on the sighting lap only to be greeted with spots of rain, often referred to as psychological rain, which didn’t really affect grip too much. The track was so warm it evaporated very quickly. The flag dropped signalling the start and I got a fairly good launch only for the bike to drop out of second gear while I was at full throttle. This killed any drive I had while I tap danced on the shifter to get some speed. Fourth into turn one and I took a couple of corners to get into a groove by which time the first four riders had made a bit of a gap.

I was working hard to pull them in over the initial laps but the bike was still suffering from some setup issues, which meant I was riding my balls off to catch my fellow Pro-Twin competitor in 4^th place. But eventually I did and we had a hard battle to the chequered flag pretty much decided by who could get past the back-markers without losing too much time. This time it turned out that I was able to take 4^th and on the cool down lap I decided that they were the hardest 8 laps of my life!

Race 2
I had learnt my lesson from Hampton Downs not to change too much between races but I knew I couldn’t leave the bike as it was if I wanted to get a good result. Fortunately Robert Taylor from CKT was on hand to tweak the bike and this is when I started wishing I had attended the test day so we could have tried things then. Anyway, we had an idea of what needed to be done so we went a bit stiffer on the front so that it could ride higher in the stroke – sounded good to me!

The weather was fine and this time I got an even better launch but again the bike dropped out of gear (why does this keep happening!!!). So with a very similar start to this race as the previous one I set about catching my Pro-Twin competition. I could feel that the bike was riding higher at the front and this did seem a bit nicer in some areas but again it felt like something was missing and I was not able to apex corners like I normally do. My lap times got quicker as I settled into the new setup and I took 4^th place with about 3 laps to go. Scott Moir had not been too far from me by the end of the first race but this time he was lapping considerably quicker and cleared off to leave us battling for a best of 4^th place.

Unfortunately, I was not able to make a gap on the rider behind me and I missed my lines a few times meaning he managed to get by me again. Now, I like a hard race but this one was getting a bit dirty.  We had already been side by side on the straight a few times only for me to have to grab the brakes to avoid being run off the track or into pit wall. Similarly I had put in a couple of hard passes, which he probably wasn’t thrilled about and I admit that. But it all came to an end when I was entering turn one on the brakes up the inside of a back-marker and the other rider tried to make it through a gap between us clipping my left handlebar in the process. As I was trying to turn the bike into the corner, the bike did not like having the wheel facing the wrong way and caused me to have to abort altogether, missing the unsuspecting back-marker by what felt like millimetres. After avoiding a two bike pileup I was facing the familiar situation of kitty litter surfing towards a rapidly approaching tyre wall and yes, I dropped it. Turns out a stone had lodged in the brakes and locked the front wheel so I wasn’t going to make a comeback whether the bike wanted to start or not (and it didn’t).

So, not such a good end to the day and the way the points system is stacked, a DNF really puts a dent in the championship. I haven’t given up on 3^rd place overall however so we will have to see how it all works out at Wanganui.

I’d like to thank the organisers and marshals for putting on a good meeting, which ran just as smoothly as round one. Thanks to my sponsors NWA for providing me with the best Pirelli tyres and Robert from CKT for the best suspension. And especially to my family and supporters for coming to help or watch and giving me a real boost on the track.

#36 - In the Media

An article from the Manawatu Standard (17/12/10)

Tri-Series Round 1

With the bike looking like a million bucks thanks to Brent Kennard (UCOL Trade Skills, Kennard Collision Repair) we arrived at the Hampton Downs race track on Friday morning to get ready for an afternoon practice session.

Robert Taylor from CKT had been working on my front forks to improve the front end feel of the bike and I could feel a big improvement straight away. The bike was soaking up the bumps that I recalled from the national round here in March yet still provided good feedback from the front tyre.

My partner Caroline timed me doing a 1:13.0 on old tyres so I was feeling pretty happy with the setup of the bike. Unfortunately I made a small mistake on the slowest corner on the track and lost the front at very low speed resulting in surprisingly little damage to the bike. Although not how I wanted to finish the day, I knew what caused the crash and was otherwise happy with how the bike felt.

The next day we set up the pit and got ready for the Formula 3 qualifying session with an unused set of Pirelli Superbike slicks ready to go. The bike is setup for the ProTwin class but as they don’t run a ProTwin class in the Tri-Series I had to run against much higher spec bikes in the F3 class.

QP
Qualifying went well as I tried to adjust to the grip of the tyres and managed to get a few early laps in without too much traffic to set a 1:12.3, which was enough to give me pole position and a bonus championship point. This was a real boost but the top five riders were very close.

Race 1
The start was being controlled by a flag drop instead of lights and I didn’t get a very good start, which left me in 4^th place after the first turn. I settled into a bit of a rhythm to pick my way past the riders ahead of me until I got in behind Terry Fitzgerald who’s bike was very competive coming up the hill onto the main straight. I managed to stick in behind him and show him a wheel a couple of times but it was difficult to make any passes stick. On the second to last lap I managed to get past and gain an advantage leading into the last lap. I put my head down and held on to take the win by 0.2 of a second over Terry – what a great start to the summer season!

Here's the onboard footage of the race:

Race 2
Although there was nothing wrong with the setup of the bike we decided to make a small change to help turn the bike coming out of the corners, which was one area I thought we could improve on. Unfortunatley, on the warm up lap I noticed that one of the handle bars had moved and my left arm was a bit cramped for space going around some of the corners. This was a bit disconcerting but I knew I could just ignore it. I got a slightly better start this time but over the lap I lost a place and was back in fourth again. The next lap I tried to advance but I could see Terry was setting a blistering lap and was making a big gap to Geoff Booth in second place. I managed to get into second after a couple of laps and set about chasing Terry but the bike was not as good under the brakes, bottoming out the forks, and I made a mistake going into turn two running wide onto the grass. This meant that four riders went straight past and put a 4-5 second gap to me in 5^th place. I tried to make up the gap but I soon realised that I couldn’t go as quick as in race one and decided to settle for 5^th place.

I was pretty disappointed to end the day with a low point but it means that I am sitting in second place in the championship 5 points behind Terry and my goal was to finish in the top three so it is not so bad. I was more disappointed that I had not bettered my personal best lap time from the national round when I was riding my older bike.

Next Saturday (18^th Dec) is round two at Manfeild, which is a much more horse power oriented track so my goal of finishing top 3 will remain the same.

Pacific Club Summer Series Rnd 1

After what seemed like an eternity, it was finally time to wheel the bike out again and blow away the webs.

I had been toiling away in the garage for a while fitting a new subframe and sexy GSXR600 fairings to make the bike look much better. Unfortunately, they were still unpainted and looked a bit rubbish but I was planning on a low key weekend just making sure that everything was working on the bike.

...only the bike wasn't working.

Saturday Practice Day
I had pretty much given up on the bike after trying the get the bloody thing started and had gone through a number of problems ranging from a faulty battery to the tip over sensor but still it wouldn't fire up. So I decided to go to the track anyway and hopefully someone would shed some light on the situation.

I hadn't been there long before Frenchy very generously decided to give me a hand and didn't give up until we had finally found the culprit. Turns out the crank sensor became unplugged at some point after I replaced the battery, this took all of 5 seconds for Chris Osbourne to fix!


So once the bike was running and the Super Corsas were warmed I went out for my first session of the day. I felt more than a bit rusty, which wasn't helped by the fact that I didn't have any foam on the seat and I was slipping all over the place.


For the next session I solved that problem and added some padding to the tank for extra grip and it made a huge difference. I also had my lap timer on for this session and was pleasantly surprised to see the times coming down into the low 1:14s. I didn't feel like I was pushing very hard so I'm not sure it these times were correct but for the next session I was again in the 14s and more consistently quick.

I called it a day and went home to try and get some sleep as I was knackered.

Sunday Race Day

I awoke feeling relatively fresh and after a bit of a panic about the weather I was heading out to the track from Palmy. I got set up and signed in and waited for qualifying. F3 / Pro-Twin QP was up fairly early and I felt confident of getting back into the 14s during this session. Unfortunately my gear linkage had come loose, which forced me to come in early but I had set an ok time which put me 5th on the grid.

I also went out in the F2 qualifying session but was disappointed to only do a high 1:15 lap time in this session. I felt like I was pushing harder than the previous day but the lap times were not as good, which makes me think there was a problem with my lap timer from the previous day. Anyway, I didn't plan on doing the F2 races so my qualifying time from this session meant nothing.

Pro-Twin Race 1
I lined up on the grid directly behind Nick Cain on Ozzy's 450. I knew that this was his first time starting on this bike so I pointed my nose to the right of him to try and get around if it went pear shaped. It turned out to be a good idea as he nearly looped the thing and I still got a bit of a surprise. After the usual antics into the first corner I ended up sitting behind Scott Moir for the next few laps while Jason Easton buggered off into the distance.
Scott seemed to be doing identical lap times to me and it wasn't until the last lap that he slowed enough for me to get past and finish second overall and first Pro-Twin.
My best lap in this race was a 1:15.0 so not the greatest but was fairly happy considering the age of my tyres.

Pro-Twin Race 2
I managed to get a good launch and out-braked Jason into turn one to lead coming out. Going round turn two Jason passed me back and I noticed how much more settled his bike was than mine (something to work on). It wasn't long before Nick Cain came past after getting a better start than last time. I came back past on the brakes but he was murdering me coming out of Higgins and it soon became apparent that I wouldn't be able to keep up. I eased off for the rest of the race to finish 3rd over the line but picked up another win in the Pro-Twin class.

So a good day out and a successful shakedown before the Tri-Series in December.

Thanks to Robert at CKT for fine tuning the rear shock and allowing me to keep running old tyres that just won't die. Also thanks to NWA for providing me with the excellent Pirelli Super Corsa tyres.