Bel Ray 6 Hour Phillip Island Dec 3-5
Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2010 9:47 pm
For those of you not in Oz the 6 hour was a big production-based bike race that ran in the 70's and 80's. It's been revived and is in its 2nd year.
Friend of mine with a ZX10, Jim Burke wanted to enter, one thing led to another and three of us entered on the bike, Jim, myself and Stuart Ellis, all of us old club hacks from Sydney. We did a lot of planning and preparation, many phone hook-ups (they are interstate) and spent quite a lot of money to enter and get ready!
The bike was entered in the production class, being essentially bog stock, and we also had to run on a control tyre (choice of 5 manufacturers), which is a treaded race tyre in effect. There were Supertock, superstreet and various other categories I'm also not very familiar with.
We started out with practice on the Friday, and wow, I'd never ridden anything like a ZX10 before, warp speed Mr Sulu! I was struggling to think quickly enough to keep my head ahead of it on the track. I was also struggling to get it through the turns, everything about it was foreign to me, I was turning in too early then running wide, all sorts of strange problems, overall I just couldn't work out how to turn it the way I wanted to. There were several top teams competing, who are only a couple of seconds a lap down on the MotoGP times, so we were well out of our depth. I'm not used to being a backmarker!! We figured they would lap us about every 10 laps and that was about right! There were also lots of fast privateers who were well quicker than us, but also a load of guys like us, out to have a run and just be at such a big event.
Saturday was qualifying, which we took easy to preserve tyres and fuel, the bike and ourselves. We qualified 3rd last out of 37 or so bikes but didn't care as we weren't trying and its a 6 hour race! Plus we could gain 6 spots off the start anyway (we jumped 7 !!)
I was exhausted after the Friday and Saturday and slept well before the race for once, and in the Sunday warm-up I felt much better about working out how to ride the bike the way it's designed to be ridden. The race was a Le Mans start, I got a great start, the first lap was hectic I nearly ran up the back of someone and ended it there and then. Settled down into a rhythm and did a 30 minute stint, plus my best lap time of the weekend, a 1.46.7. The leaders were in the 34's.
We had Jim and Stuart's wives helping in the pits and keeping track of time, plus John Rickard who I 've raced with this year in Hartwell, on his FZR1000 as strategist and organiser. I can tell you, the planning and preparation was everything. We practiced wheel changes, refuelling etc etc, had a clear plan and stuck to it but were flexible enough to shift it around when we saw something changing around us. Without the work done in the pits by those three we wouldn't have brought it home, it was a true team effort.
There had been some consternation around tyre compound, pressures, wear for the race. We changed a few things and managed to get through with one tyre change only. Where the faster guys chewed up their rubber, we were able to keep our more modest pace up on old rubber anyway.
I did a decent stint when the tyres were well past their best just to get us past half way before we put fresh rubber on, so we knew we could then go to the end on one new set. Fatigue set in for all of us around the 4 hr mark. I was supposed to run long but couldn't sustain it and came in at 30mins, Stuart then went out and did something bad to his shoulder but kept going, he was in agony when he came in, meaning Jim was left to do 40 mins in the last stint to the line, which he did admirably. We did exactly what we had set out to do: Have fun, finish and and have everything go to plan. It was a great feeling. We finished 22nd out of 29 finishers and were 4th in class (production) however we think we may have been 3rd because of a timing glitch - some other guys in another class seemed to have a similar hassle - to be continued!!
As a club hack I'm used to running in the first half of the pack so it was humbling to be a backmarker!! It was also amazing to be passed by world class riders on factory kit who are laying down a vast arc of rubber. It was also mindbending to see 282km/h (175mph) at the end of the straight! We did 178 laps by the end, about 32 down on the leaders.
Spook came out and photographed lots of totty and may have watched a few bikes go round corners in-between, and I met Mike SS who was down with some fellow Queenslanders who were also competing. Nice to meet you Mike!
Friend of mine with a ZX10, Jim Burke wanted to enter, one thing led to another and three of us entered on the bike, Jim, myself and Stuart Ellis, all of us old club hacks from Sydney. We did a lot of planning and preparation, many phone hook-ups (they are interstate) and spent quite a lot of money to enter and get ready!
The bike was entered in the production class, being essentially bog stock, and we also had to run on a control tyre (choice of 5 manufacturers), which is a treaded race tyre in effect. There were Supertock, superstreet and various other categories I'm also not very familiar with.
We started out with practice on the Friday, and wow, I'd never ridden anything like a ZX10 before, warp speed Mr Sulu! I was struggling to think quickly enough to keep my head ahead of it on the track. I was also struggling to get it through the turns, everything about it was foreign to me, I was turning in too early then running wide, all sorts of strange problems, overall I just couldn't work out how to turn it the way I wanted to. There were several top teams competing, who are only a couple of seconds a lap down on the MotoGP times, so we were well out of our depth. I'm not used to being a backmarker!! We figured they would lap us about every 10 laps and that was about right! There were also lots of fast privateers who were well quicker than us, but also a load of guys like us, out to have a run and just be at such a big event.
Saturday was qualifying, which we took easy to preserve tyres and fuel, the bike and ourselves. We qualified 3rd last out of 37 or so bikes but didn't care as we weren't trying and its a 6 hour race! Plus we could gain 6 spots off the start anyway (we jumped 7 !!)
I was exhausted after the Friday and Saturday and slept well before the race for once, and in the Sunday warm-up I felt much better about working out how to ride the bike the way it's designed to be ridden. The race was a Le Mans start, I got a great start, the first lap was hectic I nearly ran up the back of someone and ended it there and then. Settled down into a rhythm and did a 30 minute stint, plus my best lap time of the weekend, a 1.46.7. The leaders were in the 34's.
We had Jim and Stuart's wives helping in the pits and keeping track of time, plus John Rickard who I 've raced with this year in Hartwell, on his FZR1000 as strategist and organiser. I can tell you, the planning and preparation was everything. We practiced wheel changes, refuelling etc etc, had a clear plan and stuck to it but were flexible enough to shift it around when we saw something changing around us. Without the work done in the pits by those three we wouldn't have brought it home, it was a true team effort.
There had been some consternation around tyre compound, pressures, wear for the race. We changed a few things and managed to get through with one tyre change only. Where the faster guys chewed up their rubber, we were able to keep our more modest pace up on old rubber anyway.
I did a decent stint when the tyres were well past their best just to get us past half way before we put fresh rubber on, so we knew we could then go to the end on one new set. Fatigue set in for all of us around the 4 hr mark. I was supposed to run long but couldn't sustain it and came in at 30mins, Stuart then went out and did something bad to his shoulder but kept going, he was in agony when he came in, meaning Jim was left to do 40 mins in the last stint to the line, which he did admirably. We did exactly what we had set out to do: Have fun, finish and and have everything go to plan. It was a great feeling. We finished 22nd out of 29 finishers and were 4th in class (production) however we think we may have been 3rd because of a timing glitch - some other guys in another class seemed to have a similar hassle - to be continued!!
As a club hack I'm used to running in the first half of the pack so it was humbling to be a backmarker!! It was also amazing to be passed by world class riders on factory kit who are laying down a vast arc of rubber. It was also mindbending to see 282km/h (175mph) at the end of the straight! We did 178 laps by the end, about 32 down on the leaders.
Spook came out and photographed lots of totty and may have watched a few bikes go round corners in-between, and I met Mike SS who was down with some fellow Queenslanders who were also competing. Nice to meet you Mike!
lol