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Racer series 1/5th scale bike national round 1 Brooklands Mark's meeting Both Ian and me had been waiting for this meeting for what seemed like months, at last we were going to get to actually ride these bikes on a proper race track. It's one thing thrashing round a car park but it's totally different on a track. Wow was this a shock for me, Ian had already done a few laps at Barham and Aldershot and had tried to tell me how difficult it was, but it's not until you do it for yourself that you realise. I was struggling to hold a straight line down the main straight and I had no sense of how fast I was going and overshot every single corner. I persevered through out the day, never really feeling that comfortable, this together with the fact that no one could decide on a definitive track layout and so there were 5th scale cars and trucks everywhere. Eventually I had a 'coming together' with a truck and bent a fork leg, which meant an end to my day. We arrived really early Sunday morning only to find we had lost our nice under cover pit area. Luckily the rain held off and when the sun came out made the day much nicer. I had a reasonable practice heat and was starting to feel confident of getting round the track without too many incidents. Round one was pretty good, I only crashed a couple of times and managed to put in some fairly consistent laptimes. Unfortunately because of the positioning of my transponder some of my laps weren't counted but my riding was showing promise and at least we had another four rounds to go..... The rest of qualifying was a catalogue of disasters which went like this: round two - did 3 laps crashed and bike switched itself off. Round three did 1 lap crashed and battery terminal broke. Round 4 did half a lap and my pinion gear fell off. They decided that there wouldn't be enough time to run another round of qualifying so there I was in 7th and last place.... Things could only get better. Luckily they did. I was starting to feel pressure, mainly because Emma, Sally and Phil had come all the way down to watch me and so far all they had seen of me was a lot of crashes. The final was my best run all weekend, I had a few incidents, but the bike was good and I started settling down into a good rhythm. I could hear the others having problems all around the track but I wasn't really aware of where I was in the race, until the chequered flag. So I made 3rd place which on the face of it was a pretty good result for my first meeting. Lastly, I have to say that in all the years I have been racing radio control models, this had to be one of the nicest meetings I have ever attended. Although the facilities weren't quite finished, everyone was so friendly and helpful and the other bike drivers/riders were a really great bunch of guys, (even if they do come form Liverpool) :-) Special thanks to Gary at GM Models and Chris from Rev-up magazine for a great meeting. Ian's meeting As this was the first
ever bike meeting for team Benwell and more significantly the first time
that we had ever driven/ridden them properly on a track, Saturdays practice
was important. |