Bike Racing, or more specifically circuit racing , will be one of the regular features on here. For 2010 the scene is the Triumph Triple Challenge (www.triumphtriplechallenge.com), a one make series for the Triumph Daytona 675. TV coverage is included, so expect chaos on Motors TV sometime soon!
Racing news so far from this season is as follows:
Round 3 - Silverstone
Round 3 of the 2010 Triumph Triple Challenge saw us head to the newly revamped Silverstone National circuit, a mere 30mins drive from my house. Far too logistically simple I decided, so on the Thursday evening before the race, fellow Chaos Crew member Westy was cajoled into entering the rookie 600’s on another Triumph 675. This meant we got to spend Thursday night preparing that for racing, to avoid things being too simple and well planned on Friday.
The new track layout loses the fiddly old chicane onto the start finish straight that has been the subject of so much grizzling from riders since it’s addition and replaces it with an altogether different beast. Now the lap is ended with a flat out, 6th gear monster kink with a narrow bumpy kerb being the only sliver of hope before you get the important lesson about why grass track bikes use knobbly tyres. That is, of course, providing you survive the mysterious patches of tarmac at the apex, or the comedy bumps right on the exit. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an improvement on the chicane and an awesome bend, but picture this – you’ve just run wide at a 130-odd mph bend having made a 6 inch miscalculation entering the corner. Instead of a nice, forgiving tarmac run-off to bail onto, you skip straight across the flat kerb onto a strip of grass, put there to stop the tin boxes (cars) using the extra tarmac. Having survived the crash, you crawl to your feet and squint into the distance where, right at the other end of the straight, the closest marshals are trying to see through the dust whether you’ve walked to safety or not. I quote “there are no marshals along that stretch of track, as it is too dangerous to send them out there without a red flag...”. How many laps before Moto2 is red flagged at next weekend’s Moto GP? Place your bets now!
Friday’s testing was fairly straightforward, just set the gearing and got myself used to the new circuit.
Saturday morning, all was going well right up until a few laps into second qualifying when my bike, presumably suffering from some breakdown in it’s nervous system, started shaking it’s head more violently than a five year old who’s just been asked if they’d like to swap their bag of sweets for a plate of broccoli. In a not-very-brave-at-all manner I held on for the length of the back straight until, when this wasn’t helping, I let go of the bars and things settled down. And relax. Oh, now there’s no brakes, panic again. By the time I got back to the pits I was a nervous wreck, and we initiated head scratching procedures to get to the root of the problem. Turns out the rear shock was staying compressed due to too much rebound damping. We wound the damping off and thought we were safe…
Race 1, not particularly eventful but I was pleased with 2nd considering the woes of qualifying. I definitely didn’t get overexcited and pull wheelies on the warm down lap and certainly didn’t get pulled up in front of the clerk of the course for a ticking off about stoppies in pit lane. Oops.
Race 2 got off to a clumsy start, with people all riding into each other into turn 1 allowing Jimmy Dye and Phil Atkinson to make a break for it. Once through the melee I pushed hard to catch them, but the race was cut short by Tommy Dale’s huge crash. In the second part of the race I managed to get away with Phil and Jimmy, but as soon as I got in the lead, the bike got all nervous and wobbly again, putting me on the grass coming out of the first turn. Faced with 3 options – jump off and risk the bike hitting Jimmy and/or Phil, find the reset button or pin it flat out across the grass to get across the hairpin before Jimmy and Phil get there. Unable to find said reset button and reluctant to get off, I held it flat out and hoped for the best! Luck was on my side as I bounced across the front of Jimmy with only about 6ft to spare, gulp new trousers please. Again. Once more, on inspection in the pits, the rear shock had inexplicably increased its rebound damping to a spoon in treacle levels of restriction!
Once I’d finished gibbering and whimpering in the corner of the garage, we stuck a loaned shock in the bike (thanks Miss Waddelow!) and headed out for the final race of the weekend. 11 laps of elbow bashing and pulling faces side by side down the straights later and I finally took my first win of the season, albeit by a narrow margin, woohoo!
Just two weeks until round 4 at Mallory Park and lots of suspension investigation to be done by then. Thanks to Steve Jordan for helping sort the suspension woes over the weekend, Kirsty for catering services, Rich, Clive and Bruv for keeping the bike together, Destination Triumph for supplying the bike and Hel for all their support.
Finally, an apology for the lack of race report from the first two rounds – I ran out of time after the first round (poor excuse I know) and then suffered a massive sense of humour failure when the bill from my crashes at round two landed on my doorstep. I would have tried to write something, but as my head was stuck in a bucket of sand pretending the bill didn’t exist I was unable to operate my laptop. To make up for it, here are the details in brief:
Round 1 - Oulton Park
- Arrive
- Tent small, get laughed at
- Meet Chad Hashmi, good bloke
- Westy turns up and makes me eat properly, good bloke
- Westy helps with bike setup, good bloke
- Sleep
- Race, lots of overtaking, some 100mph grass, come second
- Get overexcited, ride onto grass again on warm down lap, get laughed at
- Race again, many oil on track, more grass, come third
Round 2 – Pembrey
- Long journey, van tyre almost bald, get lost in Llanelli, arrive and squat in Steve Jordan’s awning, remain for whole weekend. Thanks Steve!
- Get rained on before practice, then remember how good Pembrey cafe is
- Finish drinking tea, do some testing, return to old friends PG and Tetley
- Crash in qualifying at 2nd fastest bend, estimate 90mph crash, grows to about 120mph in bar that night.
- Race, follow Jimmy for whole race, admire how good back of 675 looks.
- Sleep
- Race, get sick of looking at back of 675, push harder only for strange instability of bike (see Silverstone) to cause front to wash at fastest corner
- Keep throttle wide open until you can actually taste grass, then concede defeat and admit a crash.
- Run around like a looney looking for money to repair bike
- Repair bike
- Race, bike obviously in a sulk about the crashes keeps flapping it’s bars and refusing to go where asked.
- Settle for another 2nd.
See y’all at Mallory
Chris Northover
#13 Triumph Triple Challenge
chris_northover_racer(at)hotmail.com
www.cgracing.co.uk
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