The PCRA had it's August round at eastern Creek. I entered in both the F750 grid as well as against the Period 6 1100s on the other grid, which combined that class with the 1995 premodern bikes. Always good fun and good value.
I also got my mate Rick nineham out there on a Premodern yzf600. First race, first run on that bike: he did well, only getting lapped in the first race, then not at all, and taking about a second off his laptimes with each lap. he had a ball and I would highly recommend such an easy to ride bike to anyone thinking to come racing for the first time.
I hadn't changed anything on the FZ750 since last round. So any improvements had to come from my riding I guess. I qualified 4th in the 750 class with a 1m50.9 . Not anything special, and I was getting seriously blown off on all the little power straights as well as of course the main straight. While the little old fz does handle well, it is still fairly standard on the engine card, still running the original style 4-2 twin touring muffler exhaust. We aim to change that soon, and i have been sourcing parts.
Anyway, Race 1 had us F750 bikes on the same grid as the very fast unlimited forgotten era bikes, with 160RWHP worked 1200cc bikes. I got a ripper of a start and went from the 2nd row to being 3rd into turn 2! Gradually the guys picked me off though.
Check out the video:
For race 2, while I had a good start, as the laps wore on I felt a familiar feeling: like running out of petrol! I knew the tank had enough in it, and i though that this must be a jinx on my head, seeing we'd already replaced the fuel pump before when it was malfunctioning! So after Vanessa tracked around to T11 to get some video footage, I got there on the second lap and .. bhhh bhhh... she came to an almost complete stop almost in front of her! I managed to bumpstart it with the last bit of rolling speed and it fired, so i rode it back into the pits with a DNF, thinking what could be worse: a DNF or having a cranky wife who had waited for an hour there to get a video of me: DNF'ing...
When I checked the fuel tank, as it turned out the brand new fuel line, which was previously hoseclapmed, had gotten quite hot and went just soft enough to let some air suck up the now not-so-tightly-hoseclapmped line and run the pump down on fuel! Easy fix, but still a DNF! This would mean starting at the back of the grid for the next F750 race!
As it happened, the 3rd and last leg of the F750 race was lost to time after some crashes in other classes delayed the day, so my results for F750 were a 4th and a DNF!
Luckily I had also entered the F1 class on the other grid, and we did get 3 legs in there. I also qualified 4th in the F1 class, which = 15th on the grid mixed amongst the 1995 Premoderns.
well, again I got a ripper of a start! I managed to pass my arch enemy, Steve Butler, and was up behind AE#2 Stuart Lomax into T2! Stuart rides a very hot YZF750, so keeping up with him certainly tickles my satisfaction bone!
I don't have this video edited yet, but if you SUBSCRIBE to my videos on YouTube, you'll get notified when I do post it soon.
Anyhow, again gradually I got hammered, with Steve passing me. Yet, when we checked the results heet, he was noted as the 2nd rider behind me! Well, as it runs out, he was deemed to have jumped the start when he clicked his bike into gear while the red light was on, which moved the bike a little, and the ladies in the tower don't see that he's just clicking into gear, they just see a bike moving forward under lights: that's a a jumpstart! There's a lesson fellas!
Well, between all the 3 heats of The F1 class I had managed to get a 2nd overall anyway, so my run of getting a trophy every time I ran the bike still held up, even though it was in a grid not of my primary class.
Thanks as usual to Pirtek Newcastle, Hourglass Photography and Emtek Racing.
Next round report: Wakefield park, September, PCRA 1 hr weekend!
Cheers
Zoltan
