)Friday track day was busy with a fair bit of track time. The track temp was down in the low 20s and combined with a rear tyre that had already done 2 race meetings it was a bit slippery. Times were down a bit for most people but I manged to be within a few tenths of my best but it was not very comfortable.
Saturday Qualifying
There was ice covering everthing on the trailer when I got to the track at 7:30! Thankfully it was a big meeting and we were slotted in at 8th in the schedule so things had thawed a bit before we went out for our first session. I threw a new rear in and just slotted in behind one of the normal front runners for the session. Times were all still a bit off by some of the guys so I ended up 3rd. I expected to be pushed back to the second row after the second qualifying. We all went a bit faster and I equalled my PB which suprisingly meant I kept my 3rd place start
There was only about half a second from 2nd to 5th so it was looking good for some close racing. (Pole position was taken by our resident A grader who is just in a league of his own and consistently 2 to 3 seconds faster than eveyone else )Saturday
Race 1
Made a bad start and went form 3rd to about 7th into turn 1. I managed to get back past a couple in the first lap and tacked onto the back of the 2nd to 5th freight train. Got a bit carried away and out braked myself and ran off the track. Rejoined and ran around to the end. Took half a second of my PB.
Sunday
Race 2
Another crap start and then pretty much a rerun of race 1 with the same result. Shaved a tenth of my PB.
Race 3
Worse start again. I could not figure out what was going on as my starts had been good. My reactions were OK the bike was just not getting off the line. Got angry this time and barged through the ones that had beaten me off the line in the first few corners and then put my head down. Caught up with the pack again and had a few looks at overtaking but not quite. ( I really need to be a bit more assertive). I decided I could go for 4th in the last corner of the last lap and was lining myself up for it but a yellow flag was out so I had to sit behind and take 5th again. You could throw a blanket over 2nd to 5th. I smashed a second off my PB on the second lap pulling them back in again
Race 4
My starts were so bad I decided I wasn't even going to try a race start I was just going to pretend I was taking off from the traffic lights because it could not be much worse.
It was!. Let the clutch out and nothing happened really. Got overtaken by all of the second row and some of the third before I had gone 50 metres It then took me a lap and a half to get back to 5th again. I could see the back of the pack still so I pushed for one lap and the gap seemed to be about the same. The next lap I could see they were picking it up a bit. It was a 5 lap lap race so I decided to back it off a bit and finish the day in one piece. (The backed off pace ended up being about my best pace before this weekend )Summary
A great weekend. Smashed 1.6 seconds off my PB and was running competitively. The funny thing in our class is that there is never a meeting where a couple of us don't run PBs. This weekend 6 of us trimmed chunks of time off. (Even our A grader slashed a second off his best. He took his pre modern bike out in formula 1 (basically superbikes) and led all races until he was out horse powered near the end.)
I wasted a rare front row start opportunity with my crap starts but on balance I am a fairly happy camper
(Next outing is on PJ in September)
