Wednesday 29 August 2018

Another season almost over

It's been a while since I wrote anything up, and I was at Donington recently, for two more days ragging my old banger round the circuit.

Getting up there was the usual chore - picking up the van, loading up, sitting in traffic for four hours... this stuff always gives me a can't-be-arsed feeling that disappears the moment I roll out of the pitlane for the first time and realise there's nothing on earth I'd rather be doing.

MSV have taken over operations at Donington and they've already made some big improvements. The old second-hand leathers shop in the paddock has been replaced by a shiny new bar and restaurant that's similar to those at other MSV circuits. They've added some extra showers (previously there were only two, which wasn't really enough for a paddock holding about a thousand people), and they're hot enough to strip paint, let alone clean skin. Paddock 3, formerly gravel and muck, has all been freshly tarmacked, and there's fresh paint everywhere - no more blue and white, it's MSV red and white everywhere. The rest of the facilities at Donington were always pretty decent, for competitors at least, but it good to see some money going in, even if some of what made Donington feel different to other circuits is being lost.

There was a car trackday going on until 9pm so anyone wanting a garage had to queue up in the outer paddock and wait til almost bedtime, long after scrutineering had closed. I opted for the gazebo-and-generator combo for the weekend, which I kind of prefer anyway. I bought a yet another set of numbers (they keep changing this season, for various reasons), got scruted and signed on, and caught up with the usual faces around the paddock before an early night in the back of the van. Saturday morning I was up early to fit tyre warmers, fire up the genny, make some coffee, and join the race-day queues at the paddock toilets.

Back when I started racing, one thing I noticed at my first meeting was the difference between practice sessions and a trackday. While the latter starts with everyone lining up neatly in the assembly area, being waved out as pairs in an orderly fashion, at a race meeting it's like bulls being let out of a pen. Everyone jostles to get near the front for a better chance of a clear track, or at least not getting bunched up behind slow guys for a bit. At that first meeting I was happy to tag on at he back, but I noticed these days I'm jostling with everyone else.

It'd been a cold night, and it was still a cold morning for timed practice, though the sun was out and it started to warm up quickly enough. I had hot tyres, a big old GP circuit, and ten minutes to do two jobs: get my head up to speed , and remind myself which way the corners went. I usually cycle round the circuit on the Friday evening, but that hadn't been possible with the cars still going round, so I had to refresh my memory in practice. It felt rubbish. Wrong gear everywhere, crap lines, just hopeless. But it was only practice, and when I got my times I was pleased to see I was only a couple of seconds off my best times from past visits, so not a bad place to start.

Back in the paddock I just about had time to wolf down a bacon roll before I was back out for qualifying. NG have changed their format this year, with a proper timed qualifying session for all classes. In previous years, the qualifier was a race with a grid start, with positions mostly decided by when entries were received. The faster boys prefer the new format, knowing their position in the finals will be decided purely by lap time, but for the hobbyists at the back it's just another timed practice session, and a lost opportunity for another race. Still, it is what it is, and all the other clubs seem to do the same.

I felt a bit more comfortable with each lap, if a bit tired by the end, which I can only blame on holidays and weekends away, with no exercise and too much booze. The results showed me 29th on a mixed grid of 40 in three classes - pre-injection 700, streetstocks 700, and streetstocks 1300. The stockers are all pretty modern, with the front-runners having a good 90bhp (plus the electronics) more than my old banger. I was still 16th of 20 in class, which wasn't great, but my lap times wer easily on a par with anything I'd ever done round Donington before, and Lee, my in-class nemesis for the weekend, was only one spot and half a second ahead of me. I think everyone has a nemesis, not always the same one, because for those of us down the ranks, it's the people around that you're really racing against, not the guys at the front. I'd also finished in front of two bigger bikes that had been annoying me throughout qualifying, whose riders who were great down the straights but not so great through the corners. The power difference made them hard to pass, but starting in front would make life easier.

I only had an hour or so in the paddock before I was back out for another qualifying session. This year I've been entering the open 600 class with all the fast boys, as a cheap way of getting some extra time on track. It's half price for a second entry, and peanuts compared to the overall cost, so seems daft not to. Back at my first race meeting, some last minute schedule changes meant my fourth race started on a mixed grid behind the open 600s. I'd done the maths and knew the fast guys were going to catch me after just five laps or so. Sure enough they did, and it was rough. First one went past me at the end of the main straight. Then as I went to tip in to the third corner, I found there was already a bike on the apex, and another one coming round the outside. That put me off doing the extra class for a while, but these days I'm quick enough not to get lapped, occasionally even being the one doing the lapping, which I'll call some kind of progress. Qualifying saw me 32nd out of 40, but two full seconds a lap quicker than in the earlier session, and Lee this time only a tenth of a second ahead. Best of all, I knew why I was quicker, having experimented with a few extra gear changes, so it all looked good for the races proper.

The first lap of the pre-injection/streetstocks race was scrappy. The bike two rows in front of me on the grid, and right in my line, stalled at the start, and people were swerving around to avoid it. Someone went straight off at Redgate, and I had to force myself to stop looking at the bloke fishtailing through the gravel, remembering the 38 other bikes around me in the first corner. Another bike went down at Craner, with a huge cloud of dust and grot going into the old hairpin. After that it settled down a bit and I had a decent enough scrap, finishing 15th in class (out of 20), 21st overall, and almost 8 seconds ahead of Lee. I'd beaten my main rival, picked up a championship point, and hadn't felt tired at the end, so was happy enough.

The 600 race was much the same - some chaos on the first lap, finished 33rd overall, almost half a second a lap quicker again, wasn't lapped, kept Lee well behind me, and had tyres so hot I could smell them when I got back to the paddock. A good day's racing, with times going in the right direction and the bike tucked up for the night before the rain started.

Sunday morning was wet. Not biblical rain as we'd had at Snetterton earlier in the season, but the paddock was properly soaked. I never bother with practice on Sunday morning, preferring a lie-in and a mooch around the paddock, so I walked over to Redgate to see what the track was like. While there was spray coming up in the first session, a dry line had started to appear in the second. We were race 6, and I figured that by then, if the rain held off, it might be properly dry. And it would, had it not been for the heavens opening again, 30 minutes before the first pre-injection race of the day. We all promptly got busy swapping wheels back to wets, but I had a hunch we were making the wrong call.

Only a couple of bikes turned up in the assembly area on dry tyres. Rolling out of the assembly area and onto the grid, the track wasn't just damp, it was properly wet, and slippery with it. As was the first corner, but from there it was bone dry until the final chicane. I still can't decide what the right choice of tyre would have been, but I noticed someone pull into the pits at the end of the warm-up lap, clearly having decided it wasn't worth shredding a set of wets for the sake of a couple of points. I thought I might as well play, but I'd have to be careful, as my wets were already four years old and have seen plenty of dry use. I was six seconds a lap slower, tiptoeing around on cooked tyres, but so was just about everyone else, and I came home 11th in class, almost catching another bike in front of me across the line (albeit a streetstock, so didn't really matter). It had felt like a bit of a waste of time though, more a lesson in tyre management than a race, and I'd learned nothing for the final.

Not having entered the 600 race for the Sunday, I had a long wait for my last pre-injection race of the weekend. It was going to be dry, I was itching to play, and it was awesome. Straight off the grid I felt faster, and I was in a pack of seven bikes in various classes swapping places for the whole eight laps, passing here, being passed there. Sometimes frustrating, stuck behind some bikes that were slower in corners than me but had better drive down the straights, and I screwed up a couple of times, outbraking myself into the chicane trying to pass too many bikes at once. But I'd cracked the 1:20s, three seconds quicker than I'd ever been round Donington before, and only two and a half seconds a lap slower than the class winner, halving the gap from the day before.

Great fun, clear progress, and no crashing. All I look for in a weekend of racing. My next outing, skipping Castle Combe, would be Oulton Park on the 6th of October, and I couldn't wait.

And then I went to do a couple of hillclimbs, broke my ankle, and the season was over. Bah.

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