Having had some spare time on my hands I built this
It is a YZF750 frame, FZR1000 motor, WP suspension, Marvic wheels, brembo brakes...a real brand whore
As it had been a while I booked in for a Coaching Day on the Thursday and a Track Day on the Friday as well as the Sat/Sun race meeting. The bike had never been run (other than on the dyno) and I needed all the time I could get to get some laps under my belt.
Thursday
About half way through the 2 hour trip to the track I had a mini anxiety attack and was trying to talk myself into turning around and going home again. The mind is a funny thing. Most of the voices in my head finally agreed to stop being such a sook and to keep going to the track. We were glad we did:) The coaching day ended up fun and very worthwhile. I did plenty of laps, got a feel for the bike and spent some quality time with the two head coaches at different parts of the day. The only dissappointment was that we didn't do any practice starts at the end of the day. These days are normally the only time you can do practice starts at the track. I had never done a start on this bike and would have liked a chance to do so before the first race.
Not suprisingly I was quite sore that night but happy that the pain was the start of building some 'track fitness'.
Friday
There is no lap timing on Coaching days so Friday was the first chance to see where I was with lap times. The track configuration that was being used had never been used before so I could only compare myself against others' times. There was also no other bikes from the same class/era there so I had to look at what the fast cool kids on modern 600s and 1000s were doing, look at how much slower I was and guestimate what that meant in real terms. By mid morning I figured my lap times were OK ish so I just tried to concentrate on technique. This was good but I was a bit dissapointed when my best time for each session was basically the same. Consisitency is good, but improvement is better! I ended the day with one small problem in the last session. The radiator has hit the front wheel and had a small hole in it. I didn't realise it at the time...probably a good thing if you have a look at the nice shiny wet patch around the front tyre in this photo.
The radiator I was using was from an FZR1000 so it was a bit bigger than the 750 one. I had my 750 on the trailer as well so I pinched the radiator off it and did a change over on Friday evening and was all ready for Saturday.
Saturday
Saturday morning dawned fine, out to the track, sign on and scrutineering all went without any dramas. The schedule for the day included two qualifying sessions in the morning and then two races in the afternoon. The format of the meeting was time bracket racing rather than class racing. For qualifying, groups are formed based on engine capacity and then when everyone has finished qualifying the field is sorted fastest to slowest and then divided into three groups which are the starting grids. My first qualifying session resulted in the same time as Friday. The second session I was able to take a second off and ended up qualifying 20th which put me on the back row of the first grid which I was fairly happy with.
Race 1. We gridded up and then we were off. My first race start on this bike was not perfect as the clutch didn't pick up as quickly as I thought it would but once it grabbed the bike launched pretty well. (considering the power to weight ratio, the light weight wheels and 520 chain it should launch OK). What can be fun about time bracket racing is that you get to race with all sorts of different people on different machines. The first few laps were spent playing in a bunch that included everthing from a motard, a Hysong (with a fast kid on board), an Aprilia RSV4 and an R1. I passed them, made some mistakes, got passed by them, got passed them again, made more mistakes, got passed by them again, got passed all but the R1 again. Another second off my best lap time so I was happy and having fun.
Race 2. I thought if I could get off the line better I would be able to snatch a heap of positions before turn 1. Knowing how the clutch worked now I launched off the start really well. I was on the back row of the grid so there a fair few bikes in front of me. I was head down from the start and then I found myself having to swerve to miss a guy in front of me and then the pack of bikes opened up and a 1098 Ducati came spinning across the track at me. Apparently the guy was on the second row of the grid and lost control at the start. His bike ended on it's side on the track and it was hit by another bike. This started it spining across the track straight into my path. I saw the twin pipes coming at me, swerved and missed it with my front wheel but it hit me pretty much in the engine. Next thing I'm going down and smacking the bitumen. Much pain, ambulance trip, hospitals, blah, blah blah. The damage was a snapped collarbone and six fractured ribs.
This concluded the weekends racing activities.
Before this the bike was awesome to ride, went well, steered well, stopped well and I was pretty sure there was a fair bit more potential to explore. The damage to the bike was fairly minor, bent handlebar, broken footpeg, damaged belly pan. I guess I will get around to fixing it again but once again I am licking my wounds and questioning the sanity of all this. Damn shame too as I was having fun
Anyhow here are a couple more photos from the weekend.
up.
.the wet line around the centre of the front wheel was a bit scary though.i had a race meet last weekend here in aus so i may have to post a race report as well.
