18th April 2003 - Oulton Park

Oulton Park is an interesting circuit. I had been there once before in my Rookie year and had started to get to get an idea about how committed you have to be to get a fast lap. Committed and very, very fit. There are so many corners and changes in altitude so it takes a while to learn.

Having had a nightmare journey up on Thursday afternoon (it was Easter bank holiday weekend after all) I unpacked the bike and all the gear in to the garage and spent some time catching up with friends. After a pretty rough night I made it in time for the first session having convinced the people doing the checking in that we were better suited to the 400cc and 250cc group than the over 600cc group they had us booked in with.

The first session was quite interesting and I soon found a rhythm despite the addition of a new chicane complex at Knickerbrook. Managed to get my times down from 2:16s to 2:08s which I was pleased with. I was somewhat less than pleased to see that my brakes were still awful and that I had the lever digging in to my knuckles just to get the thing to slow down. Hard to compare times with my previous visit although the PowerBike guys reckoned they were 7 or 8 seconds down due to the new part of the circuit. I would guess that the smaller bikes would be between 10 to 12 seconds off as the run out of the chicane is up hill.

I was worried that my brake problems were due to the pads I had been using at Lydden as the other guy who was using them was having similar problems. I put the standard pads back in and went out for the next session. I still managed to get the odd lap in at 2:08s but most were around 2:10s as I now had to move my fingers out of the way as the lever was coming back so far. Not good and very scary!

Chris 'Foz' Foster did a top job helping me to get rid of the glazing on the race pads. We put them back in and bled the brakes. Missed out on the start of the session but was immediately able to do 2:10s and in the next four laps went down to 2:07s, shortly followed by a 2:05.50s. Woof! I could get used to this! The brakes were fading gradually so there was obviously a problem but at least we were heading in the right direction.

During lunch we decided that we had moved the brake pistons slightly and that had dislodged some air in the system some how. We, well, Foz cleaned up the pistons and pushed them back further while I deglazed the pads again. We then bled the brakes again only to find they had reverted back to where we started, i.e. not very good at all.

The first session after lunch I had put some new tyres on so I spent the time gradually building up my speed and was soon back in the 2:08s with the lever back to my knuckles. A very strange problem really as it seems that the first two inches of lever travel produces no braking effect at all. The brakes had been completely bled with new high performance fluid at Lydden and it didn't matter how many times we bled them we couldn't get all the air out.

The penultimate sessions was better as a couple of 250GP bikes came by and I tried my hardest to hang on to them. I was surprised that they weren't pulling away as fast as I expected and I was soon putting together 2:06s laps with poor brakes. Having bled the brakes again and deglazed the pads before the last session I went out with a point to prove and managed to string together a run of five or six laps all in the 2:05.50s area which I was quite pleased with.

A good day but spoiled by the lack of consistent braking. A bit more work to be done before the race but it showed promise and I was on the pace of the other two SV650s out there if not slightly faster.