There was absolutely nowhere to set up in the pits and we ended up pitting in the field which was pretty muddy at that point.Thanks to Peter Donaldson for this excellent action shot.
I was a bit cheesed off at first with the thought of having to ride my bike through the mud to get to the fire-up road, but it worked out rather good in the end.It meant we could all set up camp together and have a fire in the evenings without freaking anyone out at the thought of burning the pits down. And once the sun came out the mud quickly vanished and I had no trouble whatsoever.
On the Saturday the weather was good, the bike passed scruitineering with no problems. All 8 entries for Competition bike were there and we were called mid morning for the first qualifying round.
This picture and the next are from Alan Currans collection. So many thanks go to Alan for them.
In the pairing lanes I was paired with Andy Fawcett, a racer who was new to Competition bike himself but not new to drag racing. He has been running for several years in other classes and has turned his 1340cc into an outlaw bike with super long swingarm. He was apprehensive about running his bike after fitting computerized boost controller.
I was sticking to my plan of running at least once without the nitrous on and getting my first full quarter mile pass on the bike. I figured that unless I know what the engine can do on it's own I'll have nothing to judge by how much the nitrous improves things.
The track seemed very well prepped, my boots were sticking to the surface more than I had experienced before.
Andy went into stage before I even entered pre-stage, I don't know if he was having trouble or not but he set off too soon and redlit. I managed to avoid the temptation to set off because he had and waited for the yellow. It was the best run I have done so far, it left the line well and went nice and straight all the way to the finish. At every stage down the track I beat my previous best times.
An elapsed time of 9.857 and 130.6mph terminal speed. I was very pleased with that.
After round one of qualifying the top 5 positions were as follows:
1. Ivan Birch 8.7702/152.69
2. Alan Young 9.1066/156.02
3. Stuart Crane 9.5606/118.46
4. Phil Crossley 9.8574/130.60
5. Fiona Moor 11.3918/151.63
Andy Fawcett had a part come loose and I found him on the return road, his bike smoking badly, I helped him push it back. It turns out he lives just down the road from me in Preston and has lots of parts for sale I want to buy!By early afternoon comp bike was called once again. This time I turned the nitrous on. I can't remember who was in the opposite lane but they had problems and had to pull out.
I got away really well, shaving over a tenth off my previous best 60ft time, the nitrous had just started to come on and I made a mistake and accidentally touched the air shifter and it changed into 2nd gear way too soon.
So I had to wait for it to pick up in second then carry on. It had really started to bang it out by half track but about 150ft from the finish I ran clean out of revs and had no gears left. I ended up shutting off slightly to stop it hitting the rev limiter. It was obvious that the gearing wasn't right.
Looking at the times and comparing them to my previous run, I worked out that had I not changed gear by mistake and had the correct gearing, it should have been approx 9.3 second run. As it was I still ran a 9.768 but with a slower 128.9mph terminal speed.
Everyone was hoping that we would get a 3rd qualifying run in that day, and we nearly did when we were called once again and had just made it to the fire up road when one of the Pro Mod cars lost it during a burnout and took the tree out, smashing it into the guardrail. That saw an end to the days qualifying whilst tree repairs were underway.
During the evening I decided to do something about the
gearing and change to a 2 teeth smaller back sprocket. This was more of a mission than expected as there is a bearing retainer pressed into the sprocket itself. With the help of some rocks, bits of wood and a specially fabricated metal curvy thing, we eventually managed to knock it out and fitted the new sprocket.I managed to avoid having to cut any links out of the chain too as there was plenty of adjustment remaining at the wheel spindle.
The next day was spoiled by the odd rain shower.
Just as soon as they managed to get the track dry it would rain once again. We did make it to the pairing lanes once but it started to rain again!
That meant that the qualifying positions after the 2 rounds on Saturday were final.
These are the top 5 positions:
1. Ivan Birch 8.7617/143.83
2. Alan Young 9.1066/156.02
3. Phil Leamon 9.3803/147.10
4. Stuart Crane 9.5476/102.50
5. Phil Crossley 9.7689/128.90
For Mondays first round of eliminations it put me against Stuart Crane. He runs a real nice looking GSX and has run much faster than his 9.5 sec qualifying time, and much faster than me!Monday started off very wet. Racing didn't start until early afternoon and the track wasn't as good as it was on Saturday.
As well as the change of sprocket I had also changed the program on the nitrous controller. Instead of a slow 4 second build time I set it to start building 1 second into the run and to build to 100% over the next 1.5 seconds.
I got a really bad start, I think the taller 1st gear caught me out and it took longer to get it going. When it did hook the bike was pulling a bit to the right and the front wheel came up.
I had to back off slightly and get it back on track before winding it on again. The rest of the run felt great, it pulled really strong all the way to the finish and I was sure it was going to be my fastest run so far.However.....
The time slip shows different. I had the worst run of the weekend through every time trap. The second half I was catching up rapidly but it wasn't enough and I finished with an elapsed time of 9.992 seconds,
I didn't run out of gears this time though and my top speed shows some promise. A terminal of 143.71mph.
Stuart Crane in the other lane ran a much faster time however and that was me out of the competition. So we packed up and headed off home.
Tired ... fast and Happy!
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