We didn't want the same problems that affected out first race last year, so this year we haven't done anything radical with the engine. Straightaway in the bike settled down and we were lapping 1m 8s. We used the same gearing as last year and the bike worked well especially down the hill through the right, left combination.
It started raining in the afternoon so we didn't bother doing much in the wet. We were happy that the bike would be reliable and hoped for better weather for tomorrow.
Sunday 30th April 2000
A good day! The track was dry and the weather got better as the day went on. The bike ran fine, we were doing 1m 7s and 1m 6s consistently. We did have two accidents. I fell off at the end of the straight trying to outbrake someone and lost the front! Lea did exactly the same thing at the next right hand hairpin. Both accidents didn't damage the bike so we only lost a few seconds on each one. The new paint got scratched on both side, so the bike now looks used (a good thing in my opinion!).
One of our friends had a go on the bike mid race, he was lapping at 1m16s but was being sensible. Ian was chuffed that we'd let him have a go on the bike. After the race we were chuffed that the bike had gone so well and didn't care too much about our position, we couldn't have done much more. We had a talk after the race and decided to put a new ring in the engine and weaken the mixture a bit more for the 4 hour race tomorrow.
By the end of the day we'd done 302 laps, our best lap was 1m 6.26s. This got us to 4th in class, we were 21 laps behind the class winner Brew X1 (130) who managed 323 laps. Again our bike had a slower 'best lap time' than all the bike above and several that were below us in the results, this shows that by being consistent we're able to score more points that being fast but unreliable, either because other teams are breaking down or falling off and needing to repair their bikes! From this result we need to find 3.5 laps per hour. So the class winner was lapping us every 17 minutes. We're happy enough with the result.
Monday 1st May 2000
No accidents today. The weather was sunny the bike was running fine and we had another great day. Lap times were now down to 1m 5s or 1m 6s and we just kept going! Ian had another go on the bike and got down to 1m 12s, he was happy because he'd went faster than yesterday. We were all well chuffed.
No one on the track was giving an inch and overtaking was sometimes difficult, but both Lea and me had some great battles. Some you win some you lose but I was smiling all day! The results showed more good news we were 4th again!
The same three bikes as yesterday were in front of us but this time The Noisy B's won the race, their bike had been purring all weekend, how can a 50cc moped go so fast without revving hard? They did 203 laps we ended up 13 laps behind on 190. Our fastest lap was 1m 5.53s so weakening the mixture gained us about three quarters of a second a lap. This time we were being lapped by the winners every 18.5 minutes.
| Oveall we're 4th in the championship with 34 points, The Class 2 championship looks like this :- | |
| 1st Brew X1 (130) 39 points | |
| 2nd Noisy B's (123) 38 points | |
| 3rd F U Cups (115) 37 points | |
| 4th Team Arse (109) 34 points | |
| 5th Armageddon (147) 32 points |
I don't think we're going to do anything radical for the next meeting but we will try and improve a little by making small changes.
