CROFT - MRO ROUND 2.

16th - 17th APRIL 2005.

ALL THE HARD WORK PAYS OFF.

Friday Practice sessions.

After the engine failure at Brands Hatch in the previous round, we were very happy to finally get our new cylinder from Japan. This was fitted before the meeting, so the Friday practice sessions were all about running it in correctly. The weather was not nice, about 6 degrees Celsius and raining. Andy did enough laps to run in the engine, then called it a day as there was no point going out any more. In the evening the engine was stripped as usual, and all was found to be in fine condition.

Saturday Qualifying Sessions.

On Friday night, and through into Saturday morning, the rain just got heavier and heavier. The circuit was flooded in places, and at one stage rumours were going around the paddock that the meeting would be abandoned. Looking at the circuit, you could see why. But the circuit officials and the MRO marshalls did an amazing job and managed to make the circuit rideable by 1pm.

Before the meeting we had looked at last years datalogger info, and had roughly worked out what internal gearing to run, but obviously as the Friday had rained all day, we had no way of knowing if it was to be any good before actually riding the bike.

Qualifying session one - 20 minutes. Andy went out for the 20 minute session, finishing in 12th position with a lap of 1min 34.791 seconds. Not exactly where he wanted to be. We decided the gearing was good, and Andy knew what he needed to do, and where he was slow on the circuit. A few changes were made to the carburetion and we were then ready to go again.

Qualifying session 2 - 10 minutes. From the first lap I could see that Andy was trying much harder, his riding style was much more aggressive. The lap times started to fall quickly. Andy set his fastest lap on lap 5 of 6, with a 1min 30.687 seconds. Pole position was 1min 28.880 seconds by Lee Dickinson. Andy's improved lap moved him up to 3rd in overall qualifying. This gave Andy 10 championship points.

Sunday Race Day.

Morning warm up went without any hitches. Again we made a few changes to carburetion and suspension, and also a new clutch was fitted.

Race 1 - 9 Laps.

Andy didn't get off the line too well, and finished lap 1 in 3rd place, with Derek Welch close ahead, and Ian Gardener and Barry Utting close behind. Andy was passed by Derek on lap 3, but could not get away. While Andy, Ian, Derek and Barry battled for 2nd position, the current MRO champion Lee Dickinson was gradually pulling away in front. The battle for 2nd raged on for the rest of the race. At the end of lap 7 Derek highsided off his Yamaha coming onto the start finish straight. Andy somehow managed to avoid the accident, and moved up to third. By the time the last lap came up, the battle for P2 was still on. Andy got a great exit from the final hairpin corner and was catching up to Ian for P2, but could not quite make it in time.

The race was won by Lee, followed by Ian in P2, Andy came home third, with local track specialist Barry in P4. Andy finished 0.05 seconds behind Ian, with Barry 0.277 seconds behind.

Race 2 - 9 Laps.

This time Andy made a better start, and finished lap one less than a second behind Lee. On lap 2 Andy broke the 250cc lap record with a lap of 1min 27.631 seconds. Andy was now closing down the gap to Lee quite steadily.
On the start of lap 4 Andy was right behind Lee, and was looking for a place to pass. Andy had a bit too much wheel spin going toward the chicane, Which made Andy run wide going into the chicane, he then bounced over the kerbstone. Andy lost a couple of seconds while regaining control of the bike, which let Lee get a gap.
All this allowed Barry to catch up, now Andy had to start to ride a little more defensively as Barry was trying to pass. Even so Andy was again slightly closing down the gap to Lee.
In the end Andy held on to P2, but could not catch Lee who finished just over a second ahead.
Barry got his lap record back near the end of the race, and crossed the line half a second behind Andy. Ian Gardener finished a distant 4th over 8 seconds behind.

Conclusions.

Andy rode really well all weekend, and thankfully the bike is now reliable again. We now head into Round 3 at Silverstone having moved up from 7th to 3rd in the championship.