Race 4 was, well interesting, the rain started on lap 2 on my Visor, but it was showing up on the camera on the warm up lap, there was a mixture of tyres out there, some full drys some on a wet front dry rear, by rights I should have been in good shape on my Inters, however, the inters need heat in them, they need at least an hour on the warmers prior to using them, which they got.

But then we sat on the grid for about 4 mins with the wind blowing like hell from behind us, this I think cooled the rear tyre a lot. I got another great start and tried to get over to the inside earlier as I was sick of losing time in turn 1, every race I was gridded on the left hand outside of the grid and I had lost me time.

I tried to hold onto the lead of sub64 but Keith Povah just got underneath me into Paddock I had a go at cutting underneath him and getting down the inside into Druids but couldn’t quite make it. Carl Johnstone swept round the outside of us so I was back to 3rd sub, down into Graham Hill Bend and I wanted to stay in contact with the leading sub64 bikes. In truth I don’t think I did much wrong getting on the gas round Graham Hill, but mid apex the rear end lit up and slid, way more than it ever has done, then thankfully gripped but this set the bike off bucking, chucked me outta the seat and the tank slapper that happened as a result had the bars slapping against the lockstops.

I was a bit unnerved and I lost a lot of confidence with the level of grip I thought I had in the tyres, hence me then dropping like a stone backwards for the next lap and a half. I just daren’t push the braking points or carry to much speed with any lean angle or get on the gas carrying any lean angle..

Looking back I think the tyre had just gotten cold and I asked too much of it to early. The next couple of laps ase spent getting some confidence back in the grip levels, I basically decided I needed to try and slowly up the pace and see if the tyre would come back to me which basically meant I had to ride a bit softer with the power roll on and braking.

I started to pick my speed up and was following Dave Harviek through and began to push a little more on lap 5 when again the rear broke free going round Surtees and had me out of the seat, then at Clearways there was yellow flags and what seemed like most of the field standing around or lying down in the gravel trap.

5 riders all went down at the same time, it had just started to rain and all the weather was coming from the south so hit clearways and Druids first, from here on in it felt as if I was simply waiting to crash for the remainder of the race. Staying on was priority number 1.

The next lap into druids you could see the tyre marks in the damp where others had ridden through so it was getting wet and fast, I had moments all over the place on most laps, but was catching and passing riders, it was getting wetter and wetter all the time, those out on full dry tyres were having to crawl round due to a massive lack of grip.

I lost the front at Graham hill twice, once when the wind clobbered me as I was tipping in and once right at the apex when I was a bit to hot. The rear tried to come round on me twice entering Druids under brakes and then tried to come round on me exiting Clearways as I was trying to get on the power.

It was really tricky and needed a hell of a lot of concentration to stay on. I was pushing on as much as I could but I had so little confidence in the tyres. I wanted to get past Andy Wilkins on number 16 and Carl Johnstone was also just up ahead, they were both sub64’s but I caught slower riders at bad points and had to sit behind then for a corner or a lap at times and lost touch.

On the last lap I gave up trying to get them and just concentrated on getting James Robinson who was a full F400 bike but I figured I was well up in the F400 main class so wanted to get him.

I was going to nip past down into Graham Hill but having lost the front twice in that section I decided I’d sit tight as I was happy I could get out of Clearways better and out drag him to the line which is exactly what I did.

I finished 8th in F400 and 5th Sub64 bike, there were 5 sub64 bikes in a row occupying 4th to 8th places. So again a really good f400 result and a slightly disappointing sub64 result, especially considering that Dave Harviek ended up 2nd only missing out ont the win by 0.500 of a second. And I was battling with him in the middle of the race, he doew however ride all year round and commutes in all weathers so this probably gave him an edge, but still he was out on supercorsa’s so fair play to him.

Back in the garage and the tyres were stone cold and had gone hard, which is the problem with the KR364’s as soon as they lose temp they go real hard and stiff and lack grip, which is what happened on the line with the wind howling against it taking all the temp out of the tyre. Leading to a lack of grip on lap one and the slide at Graham Hill

The laptimes are well down and all over 1min, I’m just glad I stayed on and saw the flag as 9 ended up DNF’ing.

Great write up - I really enjoy reading your updates

Had a great trackday session with MSV at Brands myself last week in perfect weather

I just love the Brands indy circuit

Cheers GeeTee,

read about your trackday on the "what have you done to your NC30 today thread"

Bike looks well mate, i should maybe think about painting mine soon as its starting to look a little dog eared! Although a race bike should not look immaculate, as it'll only be even more upsetting when it lands in a gravel trap!!

With that we get packed up and start the 5hr journey home, which again goes relatively trouble free. I managed to blag working from home on Monday, so got to unload the van & bike on Monday afternoon, when it became apparent how lucky I was to finish the last race. As I wheel the bike backwards out of the van, there is a clatter as something drops off, that’ll be the chain then!!

I use split link chains, I always have on every MX race bike and always have on my race bike, I have never ever had one come off or fail, and that’s in 25 years of racing with them. At a guess the split link hasn’t quite seated back into the grooves 100% it’s been apart and back together about 4 or 5 times in the last 2 weeks leading up to the race. So at a guess I have been rushing and not been careful enough when I have put it back on the last time.

I have a couple spare links so have wired the fresh one on and will also put a bit of silicone over the open end to keep it in place. It’s very rare I need to actually split the chain, in fact I don’t think I did at all for the entire of last year until the engine had to come out, I don’t mess around with the gearing much but when I do I normally slacken the chain right off and unhook it as the tension will only need to be changed after I have altered. So the split link can be silicone together and cause no issues.

In truth I can’t make my mind up how happy I am with the weekend as an overall. Compared to my first meeting last year at Silverstone I’d say it was a lot better but then if I compare it to where I was at the end of last year at Brands GP I’d say it was a bit poor.

The lads I raced with during the Brands GP round all beat me in the dry and in truth I couldn’t get to near to them. The wet weather helped give me good results as I am good in the wet in comparision to others, I scored 17 points in total in the full F400 class, last year I scored 1 point in the F400 class at the wet Oulton round!

However before I go to each event I have a laptime that I feel I needed to be at to class as a result, as I hadn’t ridden at Brands Indy before I had to take a look at the times from previous years of others and then set myself a target time, rather than looking at my current best and then setting a target based off that.

I wanted a sub 58sec lap and I managed a very low 56sec lap but not consistently, really my consist times were all around the 57.500’s, but this was on the dry track Saturday afternoon, I do think if I’d had gotten another two dry races I could have gotten down to consistent mid 56’s.

For Silverstone I am targeting sub 1.22.000, last years best lap was a 1.24.871, but I was total rubbish a Silverstone last year, I should with a bit of luck be a lot better there this year despite the fact I am not a big fan of the track.

Are you doing oulton and Cadwell mate? I'm hoping by Cadwell us rookies will be on the main grid and I can try and follow you :p

now then Kieran, good day out at NG in the open 500 I see!! good effort with that.

Oulton definite as its as close as I get to a home round as its under 2 hours away, Cadwell pretty sure I will be there, I missed it last year so only raced there the once 2 years ago. you entered for both of them?

Oulton is good as all day Friday is testing and then the last session is quali, I would imagine the rookies will be out with the main grid for the testing and quali so if I can help you out I'll do my best.

If you fancy a look in at Silverstone give me a shout as I will have some spare tickets.

Cheers mate I was quite pleased with the result but it wasn't the most competitive grid. I learnt a lot out in the main f400 class though was a good weekend. Yea I've booked both oulton and Cadwell, going to be a bit of a struggle cash wise but I'm going to make it happen as I love Cadwell and heard a lot of good stories about oulton.

Yea ok mate I might take you up on that me and crystal will try and come up on the road bike for the day.

Oulton is a lovely scenic run through the countryside, which just happens to be a race circuit. Some really fast sweeping bends with just enough undulation to keep you interested, and the wall of death camber at the Shell hairpin!

Silverstone Rd 3

I’ll be blunt and get straight to the point, I hate the place, for me, it’s easily the worst track on the calendar.

Last weekend saw round 3 of the season at Silverstone, The wing complex which houses the Bemsee paddock for the weekend is a fantastic facility etc, but the track is a bit stale, it just doesn’t do much for me and I in turn seem to do very little for it.
I couldn’t go to round 2 at snetterton due to family commitments so it had been a nearly 6 weeks since I had last ridden at Rd1 Brands Indy whereas most had ridden round 2 only 2 weeks ago so were all a little bike sharp than I was.

Last year I struggled like hell at Silverstone, I put a lot of that down to me not having ridden much for about 6mths prior. So I thought I struggled mainly because I was rusty. Either way it still remains my least favourite track that Bemsee go to in the calendar.

But, it’s still a lot better than not going racing so I was loaded up Thursday night and away on Friday morning, I wasn’t booked onto the test day as I can’t afford the extra day off work, I’d have to travel on the Thursday rather than Friday and also the extra £££ as its £140 for the full day. But it helps if I can get the bike and myself scrutineered on the Friday so that I know there is no issues that need to be sorted.

Traffic was shit on the way down so I arrived a little later than I wanted to so it was a bit of a rush to get through scrutineering. The bike has never failed scrutineering but I’m still nervous about taking it down, but it passed no bother so I sorted my pits out, had some tea went on the track walk to try and help me get some pace and waited around for my brother to turn up.

Shower brew Bed, we were 6th race on a 10 race schedule so there was no mad dash to get up in the morning as we wouldn’t be out till gone 11 but I was pretty knackered so it was an early ish night.

It rained overnight, and was so windy that it rocked the van hard enough to wake me up at about 3.30ish, its no wonder the sodding roof came off the wing last month!
The track was dry and it was pretty clear and bright for Quali. I went out and looked for a little space and had 2 laps to familiarise myself with the circuit again, and to try to get my head into the lines that had been shown to us on the track walk the previous night. Then I started to up the pace and felt pretty good, I hit some traffic and felt this was stalling me a little. After 5-6 laps I made a little mistake going into turn 1 ran wide so with the lap screwed I back off to try and find some space to get a clearer run for a couple of laps.

Between Brands Indy and Silverstone, I had bought another SJ4000 camera, so I was playing with the positioning of that, For Quali I placed it on the top yoke looking back at me….

This wasn’t just for vanities sake, I’d seen this done on MotoGP mainly in the Moto3 races and thought it looked quiet cool, but also I thought it may show my how little I lean off the side of the bike, I think this is currently a major weakness in my riding as I have to lean the bike over further than I would have to if I leant off more. Which is currently limiting my corner speed.

Anyway I came in from Quali feeling reasonably confident that I had gone quicker than last year and that I was gonna be competitive for the weekend given the fact that those that I had caught and had held me up were reasonably decent riders.

However the results were not great, best lap was the last lap, at a 1.24.661, so the same as my best lap from last year. So I should have been reasonably happy, but last year I was utter shit, so I was expecting to go quicker by a second or so straight away, especially given the increased braking performance I had with the new front end etc.

But to be the same pace straight away did show there was potential over the weekend to take a couple of seconds off my PB, Problem was the leaders of the sub64 class were already 1.5 to 2 secs quicker than me and were only going to get quicker themselves, so really it was going to be difficult to close that gap and get on terms with them.

We were Race 6, so when it started to lash with rain for Race 1 I wasn’t overly concerned, it was warm and bright and with a strong warm wind so with bikes circulating it should dry out easy over the next 2 hours before we were due out. Just to check at the end of race 3 I nipped onto pitwall to see what the track was looking like.

Erm, there was still standing water on pit straight, it had rained quite hard but I never expected it to still be this wet!

Hmmmm decisions, I had left the supercorsa’s in the bike in the warmers, but now I was thinking maybe a wet tyre might be the right choice, but it was drying, just nowhere near as fast as I thought it would, We decide to wait till the 2nd lap of race 5 as this would still give us enough time to get the wheels changed and get down to the collecting area.

Then I bottle it and swap the front for a wet, for about 5 mins, have a quick look over pit wall at the start of race 5 and swap back onto the dry front. Its still patchy but most of the track is dry, the pit straight is wet as it’s a bit more sheltered from the sun due to the wing.

So Race 1 from a poor quali position of 32nd on the grid

http://youtu.be/ja6K0NYwKUQ

Race 1 was a funny one, there was some confusion in the collecting area and with the race calls, to be honest I was a bit preoccupied changing back to a dry front that I wasn’t sure which call we were on, so got the wheel changed then left for the grid, when I got there, they had already started moving the F400’s onto the grid so I rode straight through the collecting area and onto the grid.

Others weren’t so lucky and ended up getting held and made to start from pitlane, this would normally mean they would join the warm up lap from pitlane and then have to start from the back of the grid. But for some reason this didn’t happen, and the bikes in pitlane were held for the entire warm up lap and then released onto the track after we had passed the first corner after the race start. Only they didn’t realise this and thought they were on the warm up lap, losing lots of time riding around at warm up pace rather than race pace for a lap, until they realised. Basically it was all one big balls up that BEMSEE have been good enough to admit and write a letter apologising to the F400 grid.

My race was OK, not great but OK, I seem to be getting good starts again, which helps, but was a bit hesitant into the first corner as there were damp patches here and also on the exit of the last corner. I think I was faster than a few in front of me but couldn’t get past them or got gapped by them down the straight so all I could do was chase back up to them again before being gapped down a straight again.

There was a mixture of tyre options out there some on full wets and others on a wet front with dry rear, but really the track was dry and the best option was full dry set up, this helped me as I was on full dry set up whilst a couple others from the sub64’s were on full wets. They had qualified ahead of me but I was able to lap quicker and get them. I got 2 bikes round the first 2 corners which was a sweet move as I felt this was one section where I was struggling. But other than that it was a pretty quiet race.

I got massively baulked coming out of the last corner 2 laps from the end, and got dabbed by two riders, which was annoying, they were two faster riders that were making their way back through after being made to start from pitlane, but still it was a stupid thing to let happen, I should have ridden round the outside of the guy. The fact I was annoyed at myself showed heading down into Village hairpin, where I thought I made a pretty sensible pass at the time, watching it back I came from a bit further back than I thought I had, I was never in any danger of not being able to stop or of the guy not seeing me and turning in leaving me nowhere to go as I was in his eye line early enough.

With that done I had nothing but faster riders in front of me to drag me along and managed to bang in my best lap on the last lap of a 1.24.649. I finished up in 20th overall and 4th in the sub64’s from 32nd on the grid, but in fairness some that qualified in front of me had been made to go from pitlane so really the result was a bit flattering.

More worryingly I had only just sneaked under my quali time and the last lap was 0.500 quicker than the next fastest, so was a bit of a standout lap, as was the fastest qualifying lap.

Not good, I don’t seem to be making much progress or reducing my laptimes. However the track for the race was in worse condition than it was for quali. It was damp exiting the final corner and I was pretty gentle getting on the power there because of this and the fact I had seen 2 bikes go skittling here in the early laps.

Plus watching the laps back, I didn’t seem to get a lap where there wasn’t something happening and interfering with my lap until the last lap. But I still don’t have anywhere near the pace I need as the leading sub64 is 20 seconds in front and 3rd is 12secs in front, or in other words, 2 seconds a lap quicker than me.