Here's the vid. Won't be very exciting to watch, but if you get a chance, please tell me how to go faster!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDEP...ature=youtu.be
But! Had a great time racing down there, it's a difficult, bumpy track with varying grip levels, but I really enjoyed the couple of days down there! Very glad the heavens never opened up, that's for sure.
After the disappointment of crashing my freshly painted bike at the creek leading up to the race, I was very pleased I decided to do the trackday on the friday. Not gonna lie, I was terrified and could barely wobble round track to save my life. First two sessions I was doing consistent 26's and they felt too fast as it was. Arm pump, fogging visor, the works. Got down to 10s by the end of the day and wondered how the shit I was going to race the next couple...
Saturday morning rolled around and it was a pleasant 4 degrees. It was cold, very cold. But at least it was damp too!
Novice practice had one taker, he rolled round for two laps and came in. Most of practice sessions I think guys were on wets. Was talking to David Burch and he said it was borderline dangerous, no grip etc. Confidence was sky-high around now.
At rider briefing, they mentioned the races were going to run in a 5, then 10, then 5 lap format and so. Being such a short track, this seemed great! And it was, 10 laps gave you more of a chance to rectify a shitty start.
The weather cleared, ie; no rain, but still overcast and damn cold. I was having terrible visor fogging. I had a pinlock insert in and the fogging was occuring between the pinlock and the visor. This meant that even cracking the visor open wouldn't clear. This sucked. A lot. So, next race, I took the pinlock out and had to crack the visor often to try and clear it. This worked OK, but led to really watery eyes and runny nose. Not ideal.
The next bit is why I love racing, the bloke whom I was dicing with on track, came and helped me out with the pinlock (eccentric cams you can spin to tighten the visor) it helped massively. He also offered the use of his spare helmet if it didn't work. Yeh, I know, only club racing, no sheepstations involved, but bloody unreal sportsmanship. So much help in the paddock helping blokes get back on track, be it fixing bikes, helping with gear, helping with line choice, whatever. Just unreal.
So saturday, got a little faster, into the 8s, so still off where I was on my only other time down there on a trackday. Got some great pics from Wilson Media. David was down there clicking away, super nice guy, took some unreal images including this one:
I've cropped it to get the suspension and front tyre doing there best for me!
Anyway, Sunday was great fun, Lucas Vitale had a bad crash last corner first lap that sent him off to hospital, hopefully he is recovering okay. This caused a fairly lengthy delay, meanwhile the clouds were building and building. There was rain forecast most of the day. It held off until about 2 minutes after we left for the drive home, very lucky we were!
I had a great last race, did my PB by over a second from when I was there last, a 6.8. I was super happy with that time, but also the consistency!
I put that down to pure fear of getting passed. Shane was a bloke I had quite a few passes back and forth with over the weekend, he had a moment into the final corner on that last race;
I thought he was down to be honest! But he didn't fall off and for the remainder of that race, I could have sworn I heard his bike on my tail and was waiting to see his front wheel on basically every corner.
I had had a chat to young Carl Kitson earlier that day about line choice and his advice really struck a chord and helped me no end in turn 5 and the final corner. Cheers mate!
Anyway, sorry for the long boring post, can't wait for the next race!
Nath
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