26th March 2003 - Brands Hatch

After my first race of the year I still wasn't happy with the bike. Well, I wasn't really happy with my riding either but it is a lot easier to fix the bike problems than the rider ones :-) I hadn't been able to tell if the fork chatter had been reduced by dropping the forks through the yokes so I made sure I went out and ordered some preload washers so that I could get them working properly.

Becki 'Red' Cartwright was doing a track day at Brands Hatch so I figured I'd tag along and she could show me the way round. We also had a couple of MiniTwins out for some testing so it would be interesting to see how I got on against them. Despite having ordered the preload washers the day after the last race at Brands Hatch they hadn't arrived by the time the track day came around. I guess I would get to find out whether dropping the forks through the yokes made a difference after all.

In return for Red blagging enough space in a garage for us both I had the joy of helping to bump start her race bike - As if I wasn't unfit enough I had to prove it in front of a woman! :-) Needless to say that a couple of trips up and down the pit lane was enough to do me in although I have to admit that most of the time it started fairly easily.

After taking the first few laps fairly easy I tried to pick up the pace and found that I could get down to the 1:00.xxs or 1:01.xxs lap times fairly quickly. Getting underneath them was going to be a bit of a challenge however. At the start of the second session I completely messed up my line going in to Paddock Hill (my favourite corner - Not!). Before I knew it the bike was wobbling out to the edge of the track, over the rumble strip and on to the thin strip of tarmac on the other side. Unfortunately it didn't stop there and ran straight in to the gravel just before the bottom of the dip.

By some miracle I managed to get my weight on the pegs, got a really loose grip on the bars and kept the throttle open. Despite the bars almost being ripped out of my hands I rode through the gravel, up the hill in the mud and eventually rejoined just after the bridge. I had survived but had to go back to the pits to get my breath back and calm down. Not a good start to the day.

The next time out I got passed by Gary Nicholas on the Renegade prepared SV650 who was shortly followed by David Daws on hit SV. I spent the rest of the session getting my act together trying to get the gap back on David. It's always good to have somebody to chase although I did find that I was grinding out my rear brake pedal on the way round Druids and Clearways. A little scary as I have rear sets fitted so there really should have been enough room. I guess having the such soft forks didn't help.

The next time David came by on his SV I tagged on the back and despite losing some time in amongst the traffic I managed to claw him back in and give him lots of friendly gestures down the start / finish straight before dropping back behind him to check out his line :-) I was well pleased when I found out that I had managed a 0:58.33s lap. That's better than my qualifying time on the Aprilia this time last year and only half a second off my best time in a race at Brands - Wahey! I must have managed to string together all the corners pretty well on that lap as the rest of my times were still up around the 1:00.xxs mark.

The next couple of sessions proved to be fairly predictable. I would leave the pits behind Red and she would gradually pull away over the next few laps. I still seem to need a couple of laps to get my head sorted before going quick where as she is on it straight away - grrrr! I did manage to put in a string of 0:59.4xs laps which was a good improvement but the forks were still chattering around Paddock Hill and also Surtees for some strange reason. Not forgetting the comedy rear brake pedal scraping at Clearways and Druids. Not good!

I eventually worked out that I could reduce the Surtees problems by turning in faster and really relaxing my left arm to stop it pulling on the bars. Didn't help anywhere else and I ended up being rather worried about how the bike would perform in a race even if I did get the preload washers sorted out.