Day 1 – Motogp101

I had a normal sleep that night. Funnily enough, I was stressing out more about the day before and whether the bikes would arrive in one piece that I didn’t have any worries about my first day on track.

Our attempt to arrive at the track before the 0700 gate opening was screwed up by some guy (yours truly) leaving his wallet behind. So in the end it wasn’t till about 0830 when we got to the track, picked up our credentials and had the van unloaded. We had a few things to do on the bike before we scrutineering and sign in sorted.

We found the Australian officials to be very laid back and helpful. All that was needed to pass was a few holes drilled and taped over in our belly pans to hold oil in case of engine failure. So all our bikes were sorted by 1130 and riders briefing was at 1200. We were up soon after at 1240 for our first 25 min practice session.

The day was not too bad, approx 18-20 degrees and a stiff but inconsistent wind blowing straight down the front straight. Meant for some good speeds off the end but would cause some issues in other corners of the track (Lukey heights and bass straight).

We gridded up and after waiting on the dummy grid we were out on track, the big moment I had been waiting for. First impressions were just how wide and open the track was. Nothing can prepare you for it, just truly awesome.

I spent the first four or so laps just going slowly and trying to find some reference points. I was trying to find someone who was about my speed to show me around the track, but I wasn’t having any takers. A few of the fast and experienced guys were passing my but they vanished in one or two corners. I came into the pits on the fifth lap just to make a small suspension adjustment and just get an idea for what my lap times were, my fastest so far was 2.00.4 which was fine by me, if I could get under 2 mins on my first session I would be very happy.

I went out for the final ten mins of the session and first flying lap was a 2.00.3 and I was gaining more and more confidence. Then in the short straight between Honda hairpin and Siberia I felt the bike rev and something hit my leg. I knew instantly what had happened, mechanical incompetence on my part. I hadn’t done the front sprocket bolt up properly and it had come off, become lodged between the frame, swingarm and gear shift selector and also snapped my brand new chain in the process, grr. So I freewheeled off track and watched the last 5 or so minutes of the session from the marshals post. At the end of the session I got the free ride on the back of the scooter by the recovery guy while the four wheeler and trailer bought my bike back to the pit lane.

Mel (one of the pit crew for Team Kiwi Challenge) and I assessed the bike when I got it back from the recovery guy and it wasn’t the best of scenarios. We only had about an hour till the next session so time was of the essence. The bolt had been caught in the belly pan but the washer had been lost, so I quickly ran around the pits and managed to find a friendly auzzie bloke to lend me one for the rest of the weekend. Now the next problem was that the sprocket was very very tightly wedged into the frame (sorta like a ninja star) and was very difficult to remove.

Finally after ten or fifteen minutes of bashing and manoeuvring we managed to free it and assess the damage. The gear selector shaft was bent slightly, which could have possibly caused a small problem and my chain was stuffed. I had a spare sprocket and the old chain so I put both of them on and assembled everything hoping that the bent selector shaft wasn’t going to screw up my gear changes in the qualifying session.

The 25 minute qualifying session was upon us now and after missing some important track time in the first session I was just focused on staying out for the whole session and just getting to know the track as best as possible. It’s an extremely difficult track to come to terms with and I had never raced on anything even remotely close to it in terms of speed, undulation and width of track.

After two laps I came into the pits to get Mel to have a quick look over the gear selector shaft and front sprocket just to make sure nothing was broken etc and it all looked fine. I managed to tag onto a group of two other guys who were quite experienced here and this helped me immensely. I was slower in the corners but used my unfair power advantage down the straights to make that up difference. Looking at the time sheets, every lap I was dropping approximately 1 second a lap and managed to get down to a 1.55.6 when a red flag stopped the session.

I returned to our pit bays and put the tyre warmers back on, had a quick drink and waited to see if we would get to see out the final seven minutes of our session. Within a few minutes the track was back open (I am still unsure as to why the session was red flagged) and I was out again and managed to complete four more laps. Again I was going faster and faster with the last of my 14 qualifying laps being my fastest at 1.54.5. This left me gridded in 17^th position for the all 3 of the weekend’s races.

This bought the end to the day’s events and we packed up our stuff. Made sure our bikes were all ok and headed home for an early night. I was still running on NZ time which meant waking up at 4 and in bed by 9 every night.