More sevens.

We have just got back from yet another rain affected but otherwise great weekend of drag racing.

The weather was perfect on Saturday and we all ran the scheduled 3 qualifying passes.
Comp bike was joined this weekend by Lizz McCarthy who had been intending to run comp bike for a very long time indeed and finally made it! Plus 8.50 racer Jemma Venables made the swap to comp bike at the last minute too, which made it a nice 8 bike field.
The first qualifying run was a bit of a surprise for us as the bike spluttered and misfired just before mid track and took a moment to recover but the time came up and it was our second run into the sevens and a new personal best, a 7.92.  Here's a good slow motion video of that run, you can see just how the misfire upsets the chassis, at one point the back wheel leaves the floor completely:

The 2nd run started off really well, i was convinced it was going to be a fast one, but just after half track the front end started to feel loose and the bike began to drift left necessitating rolling the throttle. The timing data did indeed show the first half of our best run to date, with a 1.21 60ft and our first ever 4 second half track time. Oh what could have been!

Thanks to Warpspeed racing for having this trick new slider hat ready too!

The third pass was quite similar really, left well - another 4 sec 660ft but at about that point the bike lost a whole chunk of power and felt as though the nitrous has switched itself off. Back in the pits the data from the Racepak confirmed that the Nitrous had indeed switched off 4.5 seconds into the run. The cause could not be traced (just like old days i thought) so i resorted to changing the relay and the switch.

We were qualified 3rd, with Harold Wolfenden in second with a much more on form 7.8, and newcomer to the class Jemma Venables in First with a 7.7.
The pairings for the first round then were:
Jemma Venables vs Paul Wing, Jemma won with a 7.8 vs Pauls 9.5
Harold Wolfenden vs Nick Milburn, Harold won with a 7.7 PB vs Nicks 8.6
Tony Clark vs Phil Leamon, Tony took the win with an 8.0 vs Phils 8.2
We should have raced Lizz McCarthy but she had some small engine damage and so we had a bye run. We used it as a test to make sure the nitrous worked properly, but we made no other changes. It was a good straight run and our best so far, a great 7.878 @ 164.86mph. Plus there's room for improvement - i short shifted into 4th by mistake and the 60ft wasn't as good as some of the other runs.
That was all the racing we got however as it started to rain and once again the meeting was called off.
In the ACU championship the points have reached an interesting situation:
Harold Wolfenden now leads with 1140 points
Phil Leamon has dropped to 2nd place after going out in the first round and has 1120 points
And we are still in 3rd place but the gap has narrowed and we have 1050 points
This means that so long as the event happens without weather intervention, then anyone could win it.

The reward? Free entry to all next years events!

Thanks to Sam for taking all these shots and more - you can find many more pictures of Comp bike and other classes on her photobucket page HERE

The next race is the Extreme Bike weekend at Santa Pod in just 2 weeks time.