BRANDS HATCH MRO ROUND 1.

19th - 20th MARCH 2005.

BAD LUCK SPOILS A GOOD MEETING.

Friday Practice sessions.

As this was to be the first race meeting of the year, we decided it was necessary to do the Friday test day before the race meeting started for real. The four morning sessions were spent running in a newly replated cylinder, so no great lap times were set during the morning. At lunch break we stripped the motor to check all was OK. It wasn't, the newly plated cylinder was wearing out the piston ring due to a badly machined exhaust port bridge. Craig spent about half an hour dressing up the port with wet/dry abrasive paper to try to improve things. A part worn piston ring was then fitted and the bike was made ready for the afternoon sessions.

In the afternoon, Andy started to pick up the pace. The lap times got better and better during the afternoon. After each session the problem cylinder was removed and dressed again as it was still damaging the piston ring slightly. By the end of the day the cylinder was looking OK. Andy finished off the day by doing consistent low 50 second laps, which considering it was the first ride of the year was pretty good. To be competitive we new we needed to get into the low 49 or even maybe high 48 second laps.

Saturday Qualifying Sessions.

The new format for the Saturday qualifying session was a 5 minute warm up and one 15 qualifying session in the morning, then one 15 minute qualifying session in the afternoon. The morning warm up went without hitch.
Morning qualifying was not so good, with Andy struggling to find a clear piece of tarmac to get in one good lap. In the end Andy had to settle for a lap in the low 50 second bracket, which put him provisionally 5th on the grid.

Afternoon qualifying was much the same story, again with 40 riders trying to qualify on a track not much longer than a mile, clear road was hard to find. Andy did manage to improve his best lap to 49.934 seconds. Not many riders managed to improve their times in the afternoon as the weather had got colder, so less grip was available from the track. Andy's final qualifying position was 5th. We then found out that championship points are being awarded for qualifying positions, so Andy's 5th gave him 6 points.

Sunday Race Day.

Again the format for the day had changed from last season. We now have two races per day, with a 5 minute morning warm up. Morning warm up went well. The datalogger showed we needed to do some carburetion changes for the first race.

Race 1 - 14 Laps.

Andy made a reasonable start, then all hell broke loose in the first corner.
Tony Campbell lost control of his bike right in front of Andy, left with the choice of running over Tony's bike or taking to the gravel, Andy chose the gravel route. Not exactly the way to start the first race of the season, anyhow, somehow Andy managed to keep the bike going and finished lap 1 in last position.
The rest of the race was spent doing overtaking practice as Andy scorched his way through the field to finish an amazing 6th place.
Andy's best lap of the race in the traffic was 49.551 seconds, with the best lap of the race being 48.852 seconds. With this info, we knew that with a good start to race 2 we could get a decent podium finish.

Race 2 - 14 Laps.

Andy got off the line cleanly this time, and with no major drama's on lap one, he finished the lap in 3rd position. Andy took another lap to pass Chris Bishop who is a bit of a Brands Hatch specialist.
Andy then set about the challenge of trying to catch last year's champion and Race 1 winner Lee Dickinson. Andy put in a few stunning laps, and was visibly closing the gap to Lee every lap.
A lap time of 48.946 seconds was produced by Andy on lap 6. The gap was now just over 1 second. Then disaster struck. Going into "Bottom Bend" just as Andy was starting to brake for the corner, the rear wheel skipped sideways due to the engine seizing.
Andy and Craig pushed the bike back to the paddock, dejected. The problem cylinder was removed, and sure enough it had seized solid. So much hard work was put in over the weekend. Lady luck was definitely not smiling upon us this weekend.

On a more positive note, in Andy's 6 laps he produced the second fastest lap time of the race with the 48.946 second circulation. The fastest lap went to Ian Gardener with a 48.852 second lap. A podium was cruelly robbed from us, who knows maybe even a race win was on the cards.

We now have lots of work to do before the next MRO round at Croft next month. Hopefully by then the new rear shock will have found it's way onto the bike. A brand new cylinder is on route to Triple MMM Racing headquarters from Japan as we speak. This should prevent this problem from happening again.