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1999-11-04
At long last, we made it, we got to Invercargill after 14 hours after leaving Picton. We\'ve heard a little bit of gossip from the people who have been down here for an extra day. - Lance Morgan on his R6 has bent a valve, and Tony Pink has come off his bike at turn 1, Teretonga. Both are hoping to be back in fighting shape for the weekend\'s worth of racing, but will probably have to sit out of tomorrow\'s unofficial practice.
We\'re off to bed to catch up on some lost hours of sleep. The journey down here is quite a major road trip! - And that\'s without blow outs!
PS: Mark, thank you very much for an exhillerating time in the squad car. ;)
1999-11-05
Friday, unofficial practice day at the track went very well. The changes which we\'ve made to the bike over the last few weeks have all proven well worth while. (We hope..) - :) The changes to the cam timing has vastly improved midrange, and drivability out of corners. When I returned to the pits after the first of the real thrashing sessions, I said to Stella; \"We\'ve created a monster..\" - It\'s trying to lift the front wheel up when changing gears, it seems that the peak torque rev-range has moved to almost the exact point where revs drop to when you change up. (Does that make any sense?)
Anyway, during testing today I managed to get my lap time down to within 0.1 sec off my best race time last year. Today the times were hampered a little due to a reasonably strong head wind which took almost 2 seconds from most people\'s times.
Greg arrived today and was happy to hear that he could have the time off as we don\'t need to make any alterations to the cams. - So he\'s on holiday mode now, taking the piss wherever he can. He\'s taking great pleasure in timing everyone else for me, just so I know how much faster they all are. - Thanks Greg!
Anyway, I\'m looking forward to the rest of the weekend\'s racing. The bike is in top form, and I\'m hoping that I might take some serious points away from this round. Tomorrow is just for fun, there are no points races tomorrow. However, there is the SPIRIT OF SPEED race, which is a bit of a feature here, and has some excellent prize money. - Also a fun way of racing with people from other classes.
Enough from me, I\'m off to Bed.. Here\'s Greg:
Some memorable quotes from today:
Stella, said \'Chris your pole is bent in the middle\' as we were taking down the tent.
Some guy at the \'meet the riders\' night at the local pub remarked on Chris\'s lack of hair then looked at me and said it must be hereditary (thanks son!).
Another from this evening\'s $20 big bang box, Chris said \'Stand back everyone\' as a firework shot big bangs at all the cars in the car park.
I\'m off to bed now as well (no not with Chris), See ya, Greg.
1999-11-06
Well, well, well...
Today\'s been a real mixed bag. After such a good day yesterday we didn\'t expect the troubles which we had today. There were so many odd things that happened, that it\'s easiest to list them in bullet form:
Trouble starting the bike this morning.
- After we got it going it was popping and farting on 3 cylinders.
- We were allocated 2 x 15 mins practice sessions, instead of 3 x 10 mins sessions. - I retired after about 4 laps of the first of these sessions as it was still only firing on 3.
- Greg cleaned the spark plugs, which showed the machine was running quite lean, being a very light grey colour. Whilst Greg was doing this work, I fitted a new rear slick. - I was allowed to go out in the 600 cc sports production practice. The bike was still stuffed, it was OK for about 2 laps, but then went off again.- It\'s worth noting that the missing was only really at the top end, and that during the sweeper where you use constant throttle (~10krpm) the bike cleared up, under power at higher revs the missing started again.
- At this point we focused on the colour of the plugs and considered a carburation problem at higher revs on one cylinder. - It could be dirt in one of the carbs, or we could have leaned it out too much by altering the cam timing on the inlet valves. If it was dirt, this could be cleaned, if it was just too lean, then we could counter this by increasing the jet size.
- We cleaned the carbs out and found no real dirt in them, we took the bike out in the 2nd of my two F2 practices, and again, I only lasted a few laps.
- We didn\'t have the larger jets to use on the bike, so Greg tried to alter the mixture by raising the needles. We decided also to either drill out some spare jets to the required sizes or to find (beg steal or borrow) the other required jets from someone.
- Thankfully, Wayne Blackwood had some 170 jets and was happy to lend them to us, so we put them into the bike. I fitted the new front slick whilst Greg was doing the carb work, I went out in the Formula 3 practice session just to see if this had solved our \"missing\" and to scrub in the front tyre. - It hadn\'t fixed the problem. We could however see a difference in colour of the exhaust residue in the end of the pipe, showing that it was now burning a lot richer.
- The only thing left to try to swap out was the Plugs, then the HT leads. - We didn\'t have a spare set of plugs, the ones which were in the bike were some fancy round ended spark plug, Tony Pink had a compatible set of used plugs which were in good condition, we we swapped them over.
- We again had trouble starting the bike. It did however fire properly on all four. I had 10 minutes left of the 600 sports production practice to get out and test the bike and get to improve my lap times.
- The carb changes we had made to make it richer had flattened the power and drivability which I was raving about from Friday\'s test session. So in essence we\'d taken a small step backward by de-tuning the bike. With no time to alter the settings again before the first of today\'s races:- \"The Southland Spirit of Speed\" (Not a points race, just for fun with mixed classes..), we had to go and race with these settings, at least it was running on all 4 cylinder again.
- The start of the 1st of the two Spirit of Speed races was red flagged after an accident which happened 2 rows in front of me. In all I think 3 or 4 bikes were involved, with one or two people off their bikes and on the floor. - Seeing this, I was directly behind the incident, and had no real option other than to slow down and wait until the people behind me had filtered through before I could go past the blockage. - Someone coming from behind hadn\'t seen any of the trouble and knocked me on their way past, they ripped my glove and bent my clip-on handle bar.
- I continued and started racing as soon as I could get past the blockage, to find that they had stopped the race.
- On return to the front straight I shot into the pits and swapped over to my spare gloves. They had regrouped the bikes on the grid and had just started them off on another single warm up lap. I joined back into the pack at this point and reformed on the grid for the second start.
- I got off to a reasonable start, and got as far as the esses before I discovered that my right clip-on had been loosened to the point that it moved when I was counter-steering through the tight twisty sections. - I wasn\'t willing to risk racing with unsafe handle bar, so again, returned to the pits and tightened up the bar. - I\'d missed a few laps by the time that I returned to the race, determined to get in some race laps, I joined in and went hard. - I finished nowhere as I had missed some laps.
- The 2nd of the two races went quite well considering it was with a flat, untuned bike with a bent bar. (Ok, excuses out of the way..) - I enjoyed getting into it properly, and had another reasonable start, I was chasing Lance Morgan for most of the race, Lance had better drive out of corners, and was quicker overall down the front straight. I was catching overall for a few laps, then attempted to make a braking move on him at the elbow before the front straight. I kind of overcooked it a little and Lance held his line and forced me to try to salvage what I could from the corner. - I lost around 40 meters on him by the end of the front straight. Meanwhile Wayne Blackwood came through and sat between us for the rest of the race. I finished 14th out of around 30 bikes. Which both Lance and I are very pleased with.
- Also, more notably, I managed to better my personal lap record around Teretonga, during this second race I was clocked at 1\'06.18 which betters last year\'s time by 0.6 sec...
- Anyway, in conclusion, we had a very tiring, and fairly unrewarding day, we\'re better prepared for tomorrow, and the bike\'s running well now, in a way it feels like it took a lot of effort just to stand still. Along with the problems, the goals which I had set for reduction in lap times today with practice were unobtainable as I had a total of 10 mins usable track time.
- But as they say \"That\'s racing...\"
1999-11-07
Sunday is over! We didn\'t get hurt, the bike is in one piece, and we didn\'t have any majors, we were plagued with some small irritations today, Greg being the largest of them.
The weather here today has changed from overcast with a small amount of drizzle to bright sunshine. It was never wet enough to cause any concern to anyone riding on slicks, so it held out well for us. - It seems that Invercargill does have some very nice weather after all.
This morning, during the single 6 minute scrub in session I developed a reasonably major oil leak from one of the external steel oil hoses. I thought we\'d be out of the 1st race which was the very first race of the day, but luckily for me, someone had blown their bike up in the practice session and had dumped a large amount of oil onto the track. - The clean up gave us time to sort out our problem. Neil Warren (YZF750 superbike rider) has a spare YZF engine which has 2 steel braded external oil hoses. He was kind enough to lend us one of these so that we could take part in the first race. During this scrub in session, I changed the gearing down a single tooth on the rear to make it slightly taller geared. - I liked the effect this had so we left it like this for the first race.
The start was red flagged as Sean Harris crept, so we re-grouped again and started properly on the second attempt. I got off to a good start and peeled in to the sweeper with the rest of the bunch, Lance Morgan managed to filter through on the inside with the traffic. I soon re-passed him and managed to stay in front for the remainder of the race. At the last corner, before the finish line, Lance picked his R6 up out of the corner quicker than I managed to, he gained a better drive to the finish line and beat me by a bike length.
We changed the gearing back to the lower combination from the day before for the next race.
It becomes quite a long day when you have to race first, and second from last. So after most of the day spent sat around cleaning the bike, talking to people and handing out PPG brochures, we prepared for the second race.
This time I started from the 3rd row of the grid. Lance was in front of me for the first 6 laps. I was chasing hard, and stayed up with him, trying my luck in a few points to see if there would be any space for me to pass. In the end I made a really classy move on Lance and passed him on the inside at the hairpin under brakes, I had to set this move 3 corners in advance.
I held Lance off for a further 4 laps, he had tried to out drag me down the straight but the change in gearing had made the difference I needed and he didn\'t have the same legs on my bike that he had in the previous race. - It took a particuarly bad exit from the elbow before the front straight for him to be able to pass me into the sweeper at the end of the straight.
Speaking to Lance afterwards, he said that he knew if he could hold enough speed into the sweeper then he would be OK and I wouldn\'t be able to catch him. - He was right, in this single lap, with his extra corner speed through the sweeper, he left me by about 25 meters, which gave him enough space for me not to be able to make another move on him.
In the first race I finished 11th, and in the second race I finished 13th. The competition is very different this year from last, there are a lot more quick 600\'s in the F2 class.. I would say at this point that its looking harder to aim for the top 10 finish that I got last year, but that is still firmly my goal! Today I was very happy to have achieved another goal; I managed to get my lap times down to a 1\'05.19, an improvment of almost 2 seconds from last year.
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