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Round 2 - Teretonga
After a solid start to the series I was looking forward to Teretonga. During the week I had spent a few hours cleaning out my front calipers and bleeding them to try and get the feel I was after with the brake lever. Not having the confidence to brake late and trail the brakes into the corners had severely hampered my lap times at Levels.
The forecast wasn't particularly great for Sunday but Friday and Saturday were supposed to be ok. Arriving at 9am on Friday to a lovely overcast and 14 degree Invercargill day. I got setup in the pits and waited to go out. I went round and round, not really achieving much. Fiddling with front and rear spring rates and oil heights to try and get some more confidence in the front end. It wasn't the most productive day but I did manage to settle on a rear setting that would give good tyre life around the abrasive track surface. I was still unhappy with the front.
Saturday was a nicer morning with the track a bit warmer for our first practice session. I went out and just focused on going faster than Friday. I managed a 1.05.39 which was 2nd fastest F3 but knew the other guys were holding back quite a lot. If I wanted to be on the front row I would have to find another 0.5s in the qualifying, but with a new rear tyre I knew that was possible.
Qualifying came around and I headed out leading the pack, I like to get as many laps to myself to focus solely on going fast. I got into a good rhythm and on the third lap managed a 1.05.2, a good start but I could see another 0.3-0.4 was certainly available. On the next lap I went into turn 1 and got a false neutral between 6th and 5th gear nearly causing me to run off track at around 160kph, not the best feeling. Next lap the same thing happened and I was becoming slightly annoyed, this never having happened to me before. I was running out of time in the session so next lap when I managed to smoothly shift down to 4th into turn 1 I knew I was on. I put together a solid lap and coming into the final corner I was late on the brakes and tipping into the corner the front folded and down I went, damn!
I rolled around a bit and settled on the grass about 5m off the track. The damage wasn't too bad, apart from rashed fairings (which had only just been repainted from the damage at Levels!) the only damage was a broken handlebar. I stripped the bike down and gave it a quick once over and managed to get it sorted in time for our race. My 1.05.2 lap time was still good enough for 5th on the grid, missing out on the front row by just over a tenth. Looking at my datalogger the lap I crashed was already 0.35s faster than that time so a front row start was certainly in my reach.
Soon enough the race came around and I got a good launch from the head of the 2nd row. I crossed the first lap in 5th place and knew that any improvement on that would be a hard task. The crash had done nothing to improve my confidence in the front end and my lap times showed it, my fastest was only just below the 1.06 bracket with a 1.05.97. I kept my head down and didn't dear look over my shoulder for the whole race. Coming out of the last corner on the last lap I had a sneaky look over my shoulder to see Tim Gray on his Aprillia SVX550 right on my tail! I had to make sure I didn't stuff up any gear changes up and I made it across the line with the small margin of 0.2s ahead. Looking at the times from the race I was lucky I got a good start. There was a massive freight train behind me of about 6 riders, 5 of which had faster best laps than I had. I was lucky my bike had the power down the straight and no one was able to get under me through the corners, it was a fortunate escape!
After the race I had a good discussion with Robert from CKT on what path I could take in improving my front end. In the end we decided to revalve the front compression stack and go for a more aggressive damping arrangement. I was very eager to test the next day.
All week long Sunday had been forecast to be a fairly wet affair but looking outside when I woke up I thought there may be a chance of a dry race first up, the temperature of 22 at 7am was also quite nice for a change. Although as the morning scrub in sessions were getting underway the black clouds rolled in and the wet stuff started to fall. At first it was fairly light and I had a bit of a nervous wait as I changed from slicks to wets and back to slicks before settling on wets as the rain started to become a bit more persistent.
I had only ridden the bike once before in the rain and then I was very slow, so I had low expectations. I got a great start, narrowly avoiding Jason Easton in pole when he spun his rear up and went sideways. I slotted into 2nd in F3 (behind Glen Williams and the flying Johnny Small on his pro twin) into turn 1 and focused on being very smooth with the throttle in the very wet conditions. The track wasn't too bad and I got into a good groove on the first couple of laps. I was passed by Jason Easton, Neil Smith and then Terry Fitzgerald but wasn't too worried about that, I just wanted to make it to the end of the race without incident. On about the 5th lap I saw the yellow flag out going into the elbow and saw Terry's bike lying on it's side in the grass which promoted me to 4th.
As the race wore on I continued putting in the lap times around 1:11-1:12 and started to enjoy it a bit. I had a couple of quick looks over my shoulder and was surprised to not have anyone on my rear wheel. On about the 7th lap I started to come up behind some back markers who meant I had to have my wits about me, not wanting to have a silly crash trying to pass a slower rider. Finally the chequered flag was out and the race was over, I had finished a highly satisfying 4th in trying conditions. I was quite exhausted afterwards, the mental energy required for the race trying to say the least. However there was another race to prepare for and it looked as though it would be in even wetter conditions.
As the day wore on the weather got worse and worse and after a 1 hour delay, a great superbike race and then more delays the meeting was finally called off at 3pm. A good decision by the officials but a little frustrating as I was keen to improve on my morning result. Two and a half hours later I was home to Alexandra with 30 degree temperatures, at least I could dry all my stuff out!
So after two rounds of the championship I was still struggling to get into second gear but some consistent riding and crashing from my opponents meant I was sitting fourth in the championship on 59 points, 3.5 ahead of Terry and 13.5 behind Neil in 3rd.
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