16th June 2001 - Rockingham

After spending most of last night in the pub with the instructors and fellow pupils it was back to the circuit bright and early for the second day of the course. The plan was to build on the things we had learnt yesterday and gradually pick up the pace during the day.

As usual the best laid plans soon fell apart. No sooner had we got to the track that it was raining again. Being the first group out we had an interesting time - Not sure how well the D208GPs cope in the wet given the lack of tread. At least I wasn't in as bad a state as those on the Metzeler RennSport RS2s which have no tread on the outer one or two inches of the tyre.

Had quite a good session though as just about everybody else slowed down quite dramatically given the conditions and I continued round without too many problems. Towards the end of the session it started raining really hard so that water started collecting on the track. I decided this was a good time to end the session and went off to fit my wet race tyres. Even took the opportunity to sell my spare wet tyres to another rider who didn't fancy binning his Kawasaki in the downpour that was going on outside.

The second session was great fun. Overtaking was quite easy and as the instructors were still on road tyres there was no way they could even begin to keep up ;-) As Rockingham is such as new circuit the tarmac was still fairly slippery - It always takes a while for the chemicals in the asphalt to get washed away. In this instance the rain brought them to the surface and the standing water started foaming slightly as it all got mixed together. At this point even the instructor riding a KTM Duke decided that he'd had enough sliding around for one day and went back in to the pits.

By the end of the session it was raining hard enough to cause visibility problems and as the chequered flag came out the thunder and lightning started. I don't know who designed the garages at Rockingham but there was no way of getting between them without getting absolutely soaked and if you happened to be parked at the front of any of them there was a good chance of getting wet as large puddles started forming in the entrance. Lunch was called early as there was no way any of the other levels would be able to go out on standard road tyres, in fact, it was so wet there wasn't much point going out on wets either.

A quick tour of the circuit in a van after the rain had stopped led to the rest of the day being canceled. After many protests a couple of us went for a walk around the bottom end of the circuit and were horrified with what we found. In many areas there were tide marks where large lakes of water had formed on the track washing all the debris from the grass and mud around the track in to the middle. To be fair to the circuit designers a couple of the badly flooded areas started to drain away but that simply left lumps of wood, mud and other rubbish sitting in the middle of the circuit.

That still didn't stop the first of the left hand corners from being almost entirely under water. At one point there was only about three feet left clear and this was so far off the racing line that it was very slippery anyway. The clipping point on the inside of the corner was almost nine inches under water at the deepest section. In the centre of the infield was a small lake that was fed through a large waste pipe with water draining off the track. Judging by the volume of water coming through this three foot wide pipe they would soon be able to hold water skiing events in what was previously a fairly dry hole in the ground.

As much as we hated having to go home there was little point in staying as the circuit was unrideable which was a shame as the sun came out for the start of the afternoon so it was quite pleasant outside. Despite being unsure as to whether Rockingham would be good enough to refund the cost of the circuit to the European SuperBike School the organisers were quick to promise everyone space on a number of other courses and track days - Now if I can just find a track that I might be racing on later this season I can sneak a bit of extra track time in over my fellow competitors ;-)