Destruction prevention

Amazingly the Extreme bike weekend was yet another race meeting run through to completion, but not for us.
Saturday started with rain but by midday the track was dry and we managed to make 4 qualifying runs before the track closed. The last run being my favorite as it was run in total darkness which adds a heightened sense of speed in my opinion! There was a strong headwind all weekend which seemed to be knocking a few mph off most peoples top speed. We were were down 5 mph on average, but we still managed to qualify first and ran a string of pretty consistent runs.

Q1 7.7224	166.69mph
Q2 7.7575	167.93mph
Q3 7.6907	167.28mph
Q4 7.6919	167.28mph
Q5 7.6638	168.53mph

This put us in good stead as there were only 6 bikes entered and if we won the first round there was a bye run in the next, taking us straight to the final.

It wasn't to be though, as just before we were called for the first round i spotted a problem with the clutch, it looked like a damaged bearing or loose hub nut. I stripped it down checked everything but couldn't find the problem, even after swapping out the bearing and some spacers it still wasn't right and so we made the decision to not risk damaging the whole engine and to not make anymore runs.

It didn't change the outcome of the season anyway, as Allan Davies went through to the final and took the event win, making him APIRA, SPRC and ACU Champion, so congrats to Allan - we had some pretty epic races towards the end of the season. And i took the Runner up position in all 3 championships as well.

Thoughts have already turned to next year. We may change and run in the funnybike class, especially if the new bike is ready. However, i do have the option of staying in Competition bike, and it is a great class that needs the numbers. So we'll see. Maybe season 8 will be even better than the rest....