After Ruapuna and Teretonga the Castrol Power1 2010 New Zealand Superbike Championships headed to Levels Raceway in Timaru for the third round. Friday was practice day and I had quite a good amount of bike setup to sort out in the four sessions that we were to have that day. Seeing as I hadn’t ridden the 450 at Levels before I had no idea on what gearing and suspension settings would work around the tight and twisty circuit.

By the end of the day I was comfortable with how the bike was geared but still quite unsure as to which direction to head in terms of suspension and geometry setup. I did however manage to get down to a 1.11.7 lap time which was a good achievement, over half a second faster than I have ever gone round there before and a good platform to start from in the practice and qualifying sessions on Saturday morning. Before I left the track on Friday night I made some more changes to the suspension and also fitted up an unused 3 year old Dunlop rear slick that a mate had given me. Seeing as my tyre budget was blown in the engine rebuild I had to take all I could get and who would say no to a shiny new tyre!

Saturday morning and the sun was shining, we had our practice session first up at 0930 so every bit of sunlight helped get the track warm before we were due out. After a few laps it was quite evident that the suspension changes I had made on Friday night were completely in the wrong direction, coupled with some interesting characteristics from the new tyre I pulled in after four laps. The type of tyre that I had put on was quite infamous for causing your whole bike to start a big wobble when you reached ~200kph. This was a little unnerving, especially with a stock steering damper, but it felt fine through the corners, no slides or anything to knock my confidence in it.

I made further suspension changes after the session and readied myself for the 15 minute qualifying session. I knew that if I could get into the 1.10’s I stood a good chance of a front row start. Soon enough our session was up and I went out to slowly build up my laptimes. The changes had bought an improvement to the bike’s handling but I was still having issues getting it turned in under hard braking. I had to deal with it and set about putting down some consistent laps, second lap was 1.12.3 and I knew there was more to come. Going through the left hander after the hairpin all of sudden the rear stepped out quite dramatically and before I knew it I was sliding along into the grass!

Luckily I had avoided the dreaded highside but the bike had come down heavily on the left side and the damage was fairly substantial. With the help of a marshal I picked the bike up and pushed it to the tyre wall to survey the damage. It wasn’t pretty, the fairing, handlebar, clutch lever, footpeg, radiator and seat unit were all bent or smashed and there were various scratches and gouges to the swingarm, frame and engine case. I was a little bruised but nothing that would stop me racing. My Shoei helmet had yet again protected my noggin and even though I had taking a decent hit when I went down I felt no side effects of it.

After feeling sorry for myself for about half an hour I started stripping the bike down to get set for Sunday, there wasn’t enough time between now and our first race to get it sorted but I gradually worked away at the repairs. Half a roll of duct tape along with some cable ties later it was ready for Sunday. The last job I did was change over both front and rear tyres to another set of newer ones that I had already ridden on.

I woke up Sunday morning a bit stiff and sore, the deep heat had helped a little but I was still a bit tender in a few areas. I got to the track nice and early and finished off the final few repairs that needed doing and made sure I could go out for the 3 laps of tyre scrub to ensure the bike was ok. The scrub session came and went and everything seemed to be ok with the bike. My riding wasn't very confident but I had two 10 lap races and was going to finish them to try salvage something from the weekend.

Even though I only had completed two qualifying laps I still did a time good enough for 10^th on the grid, a bit further back that I am used to but not the worst scenario. The 10 lap race was the first up in the program and we were promptly called to the dummy grid and went on the warm up lap. I found my grid position and raised the revs waiting for the lights to go out. Having lower gearing than at Teretonga the bike was a bit easier to get off the line but I was still quite tentative after the previous day’s incident.

I took the first couple of laps quite cautiously and just slowly increased my pace lap after lap. It was quite a lonely race, seeing as I was so slow at the start of the race I lost touch with the guys I was usually dicing with and by lap 7 I had cleared everyone that was within reach. I had a quick look over my shoulder coming onto the straight and saw that I had a big gap behind, this along with the fact that my left arm was giving me a few issues I pulled the pace back and bought it home in 9^th, 5^th F3 bike across the line. I had also improved my best lap to a 1.11.5, a small improvement over my Friday practice pace and probably where I should have got to in Saturday morning practice!

So I had something to build on in the final race and was feeling more comfortable with the bike and getting a little bit of confidence back. We lined up for the final race of the weekend and I got a really good start. I think I was up to 8^th through the first set of turns and used the power of the 450 to move up to 6^th off the end of the back straight. I kept my head down and followed James Hoogenboezem for the first lap. He got a small gap on me but I wasn’t too worried, I continued to increase my pace and didn’t see any front wheels in my peripheral vision which was a good sign. On lap 3 I was coming out of the sweeper onto the back straight to see Geoff Booth sliding along the track with Terry and James doing some motox in the grass. I momentarily rolled off the throttle but once I was past Geoff (who was still sliding) I carried on at race pace. At the first marshal post off the end of the back straight I saw a red flag and my 3^rd position had been very short lived. I returned to the pits, put the tyre warmers back on and heard over the loud speakers that there would be a full restart of 10 laps.

About 10 minutes later we were called up and went out on the warm up lap. I again took my place in 10^th on the grid and readied for the lights to go out. Just when the marshal took away the red flag she waved us on. A few bikes started to move and then she waved again, everyone started pushing their bikes back to the grid. But then everyone started moving forward and I couldn’t work out what was going on. We went back around for what I thought was another warm up lap but at the end of the lap were waved back into the pits and again went to put tyre warmers on and wait to hear what the story was.

After waiting a further 15 minutes for another ambulance to show up to the track we were finally ready to get away. This time my start wasn’t quite as good and I slotted into 8^th into turn 1. I moved up to 6^th by the end of the first lap and again had James in my sites. Coming into turn 1 Jay Lawrence came screaming past under brakes on his Hyosung and showed me how much harder I can push things. I continued to keep close to James and was gradually catching him. For three laps in a row Jay also managed to make up for his ~20hp deficit in the infield and catch up the ground he lost down the straight. I would however quite easily pass him in the first third of the straight and lead him over the line every lap. On lap 4 I had closed to within 0.2s of James and for the first time Jay hadn’t passed me into turn 1. Looking at the lap times I set my best lap time of 1.10.4 this lap which was a big improvement on the previous sessions.