September 2000

Managed to do half a dozen track days this year on my CBR600FX road bike. Starting to get fairly quick but am contantly limited by the lack of ground clearance. As I no longer need it for commuting I may convert it in to a track only bike. That way I can try my hand at a couple of club races next year.

October 2000

Spoken to a few people about my plans and the concensus seems to be that a second hand race bike would be a better proposition as the cost of the conversion still won't give me what I'm after. Looked through MCN at the available bikes but don't really know where to start, yet alone whether anything will fit into my meagre budget.

Not sure of the history of most of the bikes available nor confident of my mechanical prowess when it comes to maintaining them. Decided the best place to start is at the top so called the Sanyo Honda team to see whether they had any bikes available. Looks like my budget is completely blown so have sold the road bike and gained a large overdraft in return for what must be one of the best bikes in the paddock. Guess I'm going to have to do more than a few races to justify this outlay!

Collected the CBR600FX that Glen Richards took to fifth position in the national championship this year plus all the spares I could possibly think off (well, the promise of all the spares I need to go racing anyway). I know the bike is capable of great things, I just hope I can live up to even half of what it's capable of.

November 2000

Glad the rev limiter doesn't kick in until 15,000 rpm as a few times I forget that it uses a reverse gear shift pattern favoured by racers and change gear the wrong way.

Lap comfortably under the one minute mark although the bike managed to lap in around 48.5 seconds under Glen's capable hands earlier this year. Still it's cold and I'm still getting used to it. Confident of at least 55 second laps when the racing gets going for real.