2007 Nationals Round 1 - Teretonga - 5th to 7th January

Well, in short probably not a weekend to remember but here goes.

Friday: Left home just after 0600 for the drive down to Teretonga. I arrived at the track around 0900, unloaded everything from van and got sign in sorted etc. The day wasn’t too bad, quite a gusty south easterly blowing which would be a bit of a problem down at the old hairpin but not too bad.

After riders briefing at approx 1000 the first session was up. The 125’s were with F3 and 150’s. I missed the first session due to a few minor things I had to do to bike but the second session came around soon enough and I went out to get a feel for the track. I hadn’t ridden for over two months, this was the first time my bike had been run since a full engine rebuild and on top of that this was the first time I had ridden Teretonga in the dry. I was taking it pretty easy just getting back into things, checking for gearing etc. The wind was a bit of an issue and you had to allow for a bit of error down the straight, if you went too far to the right to get the best line you could easily have been blown off the track. I did a plug chop at the end of the session to see how my jetting was and came into the pits.

Once returned to the pits I took the plug out and made a small jetting adjustment. Back out in the second practice session I was feeling a little better, not pushing yet, still just trying to work out reference points and getting the lines right. On about the third or fourth lap I was just getting on the power out of the last corner in first gear when my bike popped into neutral. Before I had a chance to react I had lost the front end and I was sliding over the track, over the ripple strip and onto the grass. Hmm, not a good start to the weekend at all. Damage was fairly substantial. The stinger was bent up under the seat, completely stuffing the expansion chamber. The peg had been ripped out of the rearset, gear lever had dented the tank and the normal handlebar/clutch lever combo gone.

Back into the pits I got going on swapping over parts and cleaning off the dirt etc. I had spares for everything that was stuffed so didn’t have to start begging. Took about 3 hours to get everything sorted but I finally was able to get back out on track in the last session of the day just after 1500 to check just to make sure everything was ok. It seemed to be fine so I bought her in after 5 laps, packed up for the day and went and checked into my hotel for the night.

Saturday: Well the weather reports were for a front to hit around 0900 and be through by around 1600 in the arvo. For once the weather forecasters were pretty much bang on and the heaven opened right on schedule just before the first qualifying session was about to get under way. I put the wets on and readied myself for the soaking I was about to incur. After the crash on Friday as well as being very inexperience at wet weather riding (only once before) I was taking things very cautiously and just circulated at a comfortable pace not pushing it at all. After 20 minutes, qualifying was over and I had put down the 11th fastest time out of 16 125’s. Not too bad thought I could go faster and thought I had a good chance of getting a top 10 qualifying time.

Due to the rain getting worse and there being some minor flooding, they stopped all classes for about two hours. Due to this they changed the remaining qualifying sessions to only being 10 minutes long. The second qualifying session came around, with the rain still coming down by the bucket loads and I only managed to better my previous time by 2 tenths to a 1.23.2 which meant I dropped a position to 12th on the grid. Was a little disappointed but I’d kept it upright (which was the most important thing) and in the big scheme of things, grid positions mean stuff all, 9 times out of 10 you will end up where you deserve to be regardless of grid position so no biggie.

A few hours later the first race came up, by now the rain had stopped and the wind seemed to be drying out the place fairly quickly. A mate and I went to see the first couple of laps of the F3 race, which was right before our one and we could see a dry line forming. The majority of the F3 field were on wets and it certainly was a wet race. We had to return to our pits by now to get ready for the race. Seeing as I was by myself I didn’t think I had enough time to change both wheels over to slicks so decided to keep the wets on, anticipating most people still being on wets as well as the track still being predominately wet. How wrong was I. I got to the dummy grid and found myself to be one of only three still on wets. It got worse when I went out for my warmup lap. I found the track 99% dry, with just a few small damp patches right off the racing line, oh darn.

I took my 12th position on the grid and the lights went out. I got a awesome start, rocketed straight to 3rd before the first corner but after then it went way downhill. I think by the end of the first lap I was down to about 10th and kept going lower. I knew it was a waste of time trying to battle against anyone on slicks. Having hardly ever ridden on wets in the wet, I had certainly never ridden in them in the dry. They felt horrible, sliding all over the place, it felt like I was riding on jelly. Having no confidence in them at all I just held in there for the race distance trying to be as easy on them as possible and came home in 13th, helped by a couple of crashes. Came in at the end of the race and the wets had shown the abuse they had just been given. They were torn up pretty badly on the left side but not as bad as I expected, certainly not usable in the wet again though.

Sunday: In contrast to the previous day, Sunday dawned very pleasant. With a very slight breeze and sunny skies I knew this day was going to be a lot better than the previous. I put my other rims back on, shod with brand new tyres. The previous one had endured nearly a year of racing and no less than 5 crashes, I decided that was enough and I don’t think they are even for a bucket now, still you never know. I went out for the 5 lap scrub in session to get the new slicks scrubbed and sort out jetting etc for the day. Now for some reason the bike had developed a new problem. It wouldn’t rev past 9 or 10 thousand revs in 4th gear and higher, so I just kept out there for the remainder of the scrub session to try and get the tyres scrubbed and came in to try figure the problem out.

Upon removing the airbox I found the sparkplug to be slightly loose in the head, leaking under compression. So I tightened this up and thought my problem would be solved.

About an hour later the first race of the day was up again this was 10 laps, as per the race on the previous day. On the warmup lap I again felt the bike cutting out above certain revs in 4th gear and higher and just couldn’t get any speed. We gridded up again and I got another not too bad start. The bike was fine on the first lap and I was in about 7th or 8th coming onto the straight. I was gaining on a bike infront right up to 4th gear, then the problem came back again. As soon as it happened I had to roll off the throttle and coast to the end of the straight pretty much keeping it pinned through the first corner when I could get it going again. It went like that for the first half of the race. I caught up the pack through the infield and even managed to pass a few of them once or twice but as soon as I hit about 150kph I started going backwards. On about the 5th or 6th lap I gave up trying to get infront of anyone and just settled for my 11th place. Still infront of a few guys but still miles of where I knew I should have been.

After the race I changed a few things to try solve the problem. At this stage I thought it was a fuel starvation issue due to my airbox being too efficient at pressurising the intake air and the fuel tank not being able to supply enough fuel to the float bowl. I removed the ram air intake, to force the airbox to run at atmospheric pressure and also removed the fuel tank pressurisation hose.

The final race was around and I was confident that I had fixed the problem. On the warmup lap it felt ok but as soon as the race was started the problem was back. Now it had got worse, the cutting out was happening as low as 3rd gear and I wasn’t able to get my speed much above 140k. After two laps I bought it in knowing that I was wasting my time being out there and possibly damaging my bike.

This pretty much discounted my theory on the fuel starvation issue and after talking to a few guys we thought it may well have been electrical. I swapped the spark plug and coil over for different ones and was kindly allowed by the organisers to go out in the warm up lap of the clubmans race. With the new bits in it seemed as though the problem had been remedied. Likely explanation is that in the rain on Saturday a little bit of moisture made its way into the coil and stuffed it, although it could be the sparkplug seeing as I put a brand new one in on Saturday morning. I didn’t have any issues on the Saturday which probably points to the sparkplug being ok and the coil being at fault.

Oh well, that’s what happens sometimes. I still managed to finish two races and it can only get better from here. Looking forward to levels next weekend, hopefully the bike will be not give any more trouble and all other conspiring factors will have abated.