Back to normalish

After all the ruined events due to rain last year, and the dry but freezing cold conditions at Easter, it was great to go racing and the conditions be perfect. Yes it did rain just one morning but the weather was warm and it dried up pretty quickly. We still made 2 rounds of qualifying that day, the first run we overpowered the track by miles and lit the tyre up almost straight away, that was followed by a bit of grip, then tyre shake (which made me shut it off as i was sure something had broke). The second run we turned it right down and it went much better. At the end of Saturday we were number one qualifier with an 8.11. The bike showing none of the running problems it had on every pass at Easter. When we ran the left lane it even went in a straight line!

Sundays qualifying went even better, using the same soft settings from the previous day we made an improvement on our best ever time, running a 7.85 (previous best was 7.87) and good incrementals too, but the Racepak shows i lifted the throttle slightly during the run and the shift points missed by ... well, miles! Room for improvement.
However, we were no longer number one qualifier, that went to Lizz McCarthy who made an amazing comeback after a proper encounter with the guardrail the previous day. And we finished in the number 2 position.

On to race day and the wind died down and the sun was shining. Round one saw us up against Phil Leamon who had qualified 5th with a slightly off pace 8.3, it could be guaranteed that he would run very close to that time, and always has good reactions. I left the settings unchanged from the 7.85 the previous day, and chose the now favorite left lane. It was a good run and we crossed the line first with an even better 7.83 at 166.96mph.

Prior to that run I'd overheard Tony Clark talking about how (jokingly) he may end up fitting wheelie bars to his bike trying to run his first 7 second run, he'd run close so many times and put such a lot of time and effort into it. I watched him go up the track before me in his race against Alan Davis, both had good runs and it was a close finish but Tony made it first and the time that flashed on the board began with that elusive 7. To say he was overjoyed was an understatement. Possibly highlight of the weekend really.

The downside was that Tony was on a roll, and i faced him in the next round. I went for the same lane and the same settings, it left well, started off nice and straight but around the 660ft mark the bike began to drift towards the guardrail, i held in as long as i could and tried to steer it away but it just responds so slowly and eventually i had to roll the throttle to get it to come back, at that point Tony came flying past and crossed the line 0.16 seconds before me.

The final then was made up of Tony Clark and Lizz McCarthy, it was a close one but Lizzy's bike seemed to have problems off the line letting tony get slightly ahead and it was tony who held it there winning the event with another 7.9.

Sam will have some pictures from the weekend on her Photobucket page shortly, not as many as usual as she spent most of the time getting slow motion video footage of my runs. When i have time to edit them down i'll post a couple on here.
All in all it was the best event in a long time - and not just for team bopchop!