FRIDAY PRACTICE DAY.

We had booked in for a practice day on the Friday before the 1st round of the New Era Superclub meeting at Snetterton. Mainly to see if the engine modifications over the closed season needed us to make any set-up changes for the Saturday and Sunday races.

Through our new sponsor - Dave Cooper Racing - we had arranged for former World 500 championship rider Shane Norval to come and have a test on the bike. Shane had ridden 250's in the days of the official British Championships and was always at the very front of the field. His opinion on how the bike was performing would be very useful. Andy and Shane took it in turns to ride the bike, and talked about how they thought the bike was performing.

In all Shane did about 20 or so laps on the bike, and quickly got dialled back into riding. He was very impressed with the bike and after a few  changes to suspension and gearbox settings both Andy and Shane were convinced the bike was set pretty well for the weekends racing.

Andy - Shane Norval and Dave Cooper in the garage at Snetterton.	Shane takes the bike out for a test at Snetterton.

SATURDAY - NEW ERA SUPERCLUB - ROUND 1.

Qualifying.

The session was only 10 minutes long, so a good lap was needed quickly to get a suitable grid position for both of the days races. After only 4 minutes of the session the red flags came out due to a crash, causing the session to be halted. After about a 5 minute delay the session was again restarted. Andy spent a couple of laps getting the tyres back up to temperature, then tried to get in a decent lap. At the end of the next lap the chequered flag was already out, and Andy said he did not really get in a clear lap due to traffic. Even so, he managed to get a lap time of 1min 14.96 seconds which gave him a front row start in 4th position from 25 on the grid.

Race 1 - 10 Laps.

Andy made a superb start, and immediately took the race lead. However it was a bit short lived, as during lap 2 Andy Sawford flew past Andy on the back straight. Again this happened on lap 3 this time it was Luke Lawrence who sailed by. Andy managed to hold onto 3rd position comfortably for the rest of the race, but it was obvious that something was causing the bike to under perform.

After the race the datalogger confirmed we had suffered a serious lack of speed, we were 8mph down on straight line speed compared to Friday's practice sessions. No wonder the other two riders came past so easily.

The bike was stripped apart to find the problem, and it was soon obvious that the problem was down to a faulty spark plug cap. The top of the sparkplug had been arcing out so the plug was getting a weak spark at high rpm. Even so, the rest of the motor was given a good check through, but no other problems were found.

Race 2 - 8 Laps.

The weather forecast for the weekend came true, and the rain had set in for the weekend. We did not have a decent set of our usual Dunlop wet weather tyres, so had to buy another brand which we had not used before. It was a bit of a gamble, one we felt we had to take.

Andy didn't get such a good start in this race, and ended lap one in 4th position. Over the course of the 8 laps, Andy slowly dropped back to 8th, suffering from a lack of rear end grip. Even so, a 3rd and an 8th from our first proper ride or the season was not too bad a result.

Sunday.

The rain was to last all day, so we got out our HRC race manual, to try to see if we could make some changes to the chassis to find some rear grip. We made some major changes to the geometry of the frame, and also softened the suspension, pretty much to the race manual's recommendation. Hopefully this would cure the lack of grip for today's races.

Race 1.

The rain had got very heavy just before the race start, so a good start would be needed to stay out of the spray. The start lights went out, Andy started to feed in the power, and all that happened was massive wheelspin all through 1st gear. Andy finished the 1st lap down in about 10th position, and was still struggling badly with grip problems from the back of the bike. At the end of lap 3 Andy pulled out of the race, as the engine temperature was way too low due to the sudden heavy rain. Though, to be honest, with the way you could see the bike spinning up out of the corners, this wasn't such a bad thing as a crash was looking quite likely.

Race 2.

The first thing we did after the last race was to remove the tyres, and go out to hunt for someone selling some Dunlop wet weather tyres. We were now totally convinced that the other brand of rear tyre was just not working for us. A set of Dunlops finest was eventually found and fitted for race 2.

This time, as the start lights changed, Andy found a load more grip, and finished lap 1 in 4th position. It took Andy a few laps to get to used to the huge amount of extra grip he now had to play with. By the end of lap 3 Andy was now starting to close down the gap to 3rd. But again engine temperature was to cause an end to our race. This time due too high a temperature because of the radiator having too much tape on it.

We were very disappointed to not finish this race, as a good result was on the cards, but the one thing which was a plus, was the fact that Andy had now regained his confidence in the wet conditions, and the chassis changes as suggested by HRC really do seem to make a big difference. We now know we have a very good base setting for wet races, which is something we have struggled a little with in the last season.

Conclusions.

In all it was a very disappointing weekend, but we have learnt a hell of a lot. We know that even with very little testing compared to some of our rivals, we are capable of race wins at the next round at Oulton Park. The bike has now got a very good base setting for both wet and dry conditions, and the modifications to the bike carried out over the winter have been very worthwhile. So even though it was not such a good weekend, there is the potential for a very good season.

A massive thank you goes out to Shane Norval for giving up his Friday to come and help out our team, and also to Dave Cooper for his continued support (and for convincing Shane to come and help).