What a good bad meeting

The Springspeed nationals was badly affected by the weather, it didn't particularly rain that much but but just enough to constantly delay racing, and over the course of 3 days we only made 3 runs - one each day.
We've struggled to get off the line cleanly at Shakey for nearly 2 years now, and so i went armed with a setup that was deliberately soft on the launch - taking some ignition timing out straight away. Bigger burnouts was another strategy to help make the tyre stickier.
On the first run it left surprisingly well, but drifted towards the wall and i had to roll the throttle slightly till it calmed down, and once back on the power it just span the wheel and i crossed the line with the shift light flashing in top gear but only doing 168mph. The time was a reasonable 7.8 which was good enough for number 2 qualifier at that point behind Allan Davies who ran a 7.7.
The second run was much better, it still wandered about on the track but stayed 90% hooked up and i didn't have to come off the throttle at all. The Time was a real surprise and a personal best by 2 hundredths of a second, a 7.32 at 180mph - 3 mph faster than we've gone before.
The run was also enough to place us in the number 1 qualifying position.

Onto race day then and in the first round we raced Dave Peters, Dave normally runs low 7's but had various issues during qualifying so qualified 6th. With his problems all sorted i wasn't particularly confident about beating him. I got away first however and the bike left really well, it squirreled around for most of the run but just kept going and i didn't see Dave at any point. It crossed the line in an unbelievable, and new personal best time and speed of 7.28 @ 181mph.

All three runs also saw our best ever 60ft times for shakespeare county raceway, a 1.10, 1.11 and 1.12, which is right on the money - and very few bikes have gone that quick there.

We made it to the pairing lanes for the semi finals, i had a bye too so planned to just break the beams, but the rain came and didn't stop, and eventually the meeting was cancelled.

Overall then a really good meeting for us, 2 personal bests and finally sussed how to make a clean pass at Shakey.

Team bopchop are attending a new event at Santa pod this year - Race, Rock n Ride is an all motorcycle festival in just 3 weeks time (21st & 22nd May). It's not a race meeting but a biker lifestyle event with open run what you brung and lots of other attractions, but a few drag bike classes are attending and doing demo races. If the weather is good it should be a good opportunity to do some testing.