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PIRTEK NEWCASTLE / MAITLAND

PIRTEK NEWCASTLE / MAITLAND
PIRTEK NEWCASTLE / MAITLAND

CO-SPONSOR: HOURGLASS PHOTOGRAPHY

CO-SPONSOR:  HOURGLASS PHOTOGRAPHY
Portraiture, Maternity, Pregnancy, Fairy and Boudoir Photography, Lake Macquarie, Central Coast to Newcastle

Emtek Racing Accesories

Sunday, March 13, 2011

2011 Feb: 1st in OZ Period 6 F750 winner!

Hi all!



Off we went to Wakefield Park for the Sunday Feb 6th races with the PCRA NSW. As well as entering for the brand new Period 6 (New Era 1983-1990) Formula 750 races, I also cross entered in the 1995 Premodern Unlimited (PM) class for the extra laps. This worked out very well as we got the extra laps in during both qualifiers and when it started to rain I chose to miss the PreModern race so I could swap tyres from slicks to wets and be competetive in my class. Others were also frantically doing so all around me, in particular fellow Team Cooranbong members Graham and Martin who were on 1996 Suzi 750Ts. It was later found out that somehow Martin's rear was already missing a wheel bearing, and it was only the design of the bearing spacers which kept it all tight, relying on the hub bearing instead for support. Luckily all worked out OK and Martin had a good day. Steve Butler had a DNS for the whole day as he went home at 8am vomiting: either from heat stroke on the unusually hot 45' saturday raced there with St George, or from being worried about being beaten on the 1990 F750 Suzuki he was supposed to be riding! We'll see you next race Stevo!

The upside down forks the bike was bought with and previously raced with were swapped for conventional forks with help from Metros to make the bike eligible for the 80's Period 6 class, where only bikes originally fitted with upsidedown forks were allowed to have them. That's OK, as I set these up and tuned them for better and better handling, they turned out to get the same laptimes anyway.


In the first F750 race I fared OK, racing on the same grid as the 1200cc Forgotten Era and Alcohol fueled post Classic bikes. In the F750s Stuart Ellis, Peter Hope and Rob Cole beat me, as I found that the now quite used Dunlop rear was moving around a fair bit. Still I was only .6 seconds off Peter's fastest 1m12s lap, finishing 4th, only 1.6 seconds behind. It started raining soon, and the aforementioned mad rush for wets?intermediates?oh-my-god-what-should-we-put-on? proceeded!


So I missed the first PM race while I put treaded tyres on. There's a video of the 2nd PreModern race which as you can see started damp, though the raceline did clear up a bit. As I missed the first one I had to start at the back of the grid for this, but that was OK as this let me concentrate on getting my mind into gear ready for the F750 races to come later. Still had a good run amongst the more modern 90's bikes.





The second F750 race saw me with 1m11.0 second laps winning the F750 class! I was third outright with the Lap record holding 1260cc P&M Kwaka of Keith Higgs and the OzLaverda/Middleton methanol burning 1000cc Laverda in front of me. Rob Cole's Suzi had a DNF with an electrical gremlin on the battery line, which was just as well considering he set a blistering time of 1m 09.5! But as they say you've gotta be in it to win it!

Race 3 saw me take another .6 seconds off as the track dried more to again get 1st in class!

What an awesome day! In almost 20 years of racing I can say that will be one of the more memorable events in my mind! Almost up there with coming 2nd in the NZ TT.

Thanks again to PIRTEK NEWCASTLE, HOURGLASS PHOTOGRAPHY, Metros at Silverwater and Emtek Racing Accessories! Thanks To Rick 9Ham and Thumper500 for the pics too!
YouTube Vidoe of the mixed Premodern race: