As for the race report, I feel the need to qualify my podium with an extremely unglamorous explanation of how I got there.
Was kind of half-hopeful about the middleweight class because there weren't too many entrants, and they were mostly 4-stroke 400s. Anyway, that idea was quickly shattered the day before when I ran into the other NSR guy who was hugely helpful and gave me advice and looked over my plugs and told me my jetting was right and exactly how to get the bike ready for tech. and what I'd need to pass MFJ tech in the future. He said he runs 1.03s and has a best time of 1.02. Hmmm! So that's the competition.
Had a great day of preactise and ran 1.08 consistently for one session every lap (except a couple of 1.10 passing laps). Also hit 1.08 every session if not consistently. 1.07 however seemed completely ellusive.
Then the next day qualifying saw an RS125 qualify on a 1.01 and a CBR400 or something qualified with 1.05 ... the only guy within reach qualified with 1.07, and I qualified 1.09 in fifth place in our class, but 14th on the grid (mixed class race).
The race was in two heats:
Heat 1
lined up in the dry ... rain started coming down and all but two bikes (me included) pitted. A few minutes later a handful came back out on rain tyres but the field had been thinned to 25% or so. Putted round the track to come in last, but only got lapped once ... was kind of shocked by the dude gridded behind me in my class who smoked past me at the same speed as the guys on wet tyres.
Heat 2
Nearly had a major crash on the sighting lap .. practising my 2-stroke race start I had the needle up at 10,000 RPM in the tach. and was slipping the clutch with max throttle keeping my eye on the tach. .... almost rear-ended the guy at the front who was stationary and stalled because I wasn't lookign wehere I was going!! Lesson learned, and got away with brushing leathers.
So I screwed the launch on the real race, and it took me a lap to get up to pace, by which point the bikes running slightly faster than me were a couple of corners ahead and uncatchable. Ran out the whole race at my 1.08 pace to finish where I started.
So how did I get second? Well it turns out that the RS125 guy has a handicap or isi na different class or something so he was bumped below me via some mystery of the sytem. The other NSR guy was the clear winner, and the only other contender who finished the wet race (the guy that smoked me from behind) turned out to be on street tyres and probably a street rider ... so although he was ripping in the wet, in the dry he got lapped and was running a good 5 seconds slower than me, so I pipped him by a lap.
So a pretty lame excuse for a placing, but a finish is a finish!
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MC28 SE -sold-
MC21 with RS250 engine -for sale-
MC21 race bike -soon for sale-
