PLEASE NOTE: THE LATEST REPORT IS NOW AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE .
SCROLL DOWN TO READ THIS YEARS (OLD) NEWS
A PODIUM PLACE AT THE OPENER FOR TEAM 37!
British Sidecar Championship, Round 1, races 1 & 2
Snetterton, Norfolk, UK.
April 14th –15th 2007.
THE EVENT
Our first proper outing of
the year, and the first event of the brand new British Sidecar Championship,
run in conjunction with the MRO series.
The Snetterton Circuit is long (ish), smooth and very
quick.The long fast turns are
exceedingly physically demanding on driver, passenger, engine and chassis. The
bike is constantly trying to break-away into over-steer, picking the rear wheel
off the ground, and losing traction and drive, until the consequential reduced
speed allows the hard spinning rear tyre to regain grip.The whole cycle then begins again.Whilst the passengers get a short breather
along the two straights, there’s no let up for the drivers who have to squeeze
every last fraction-of-a-second by giving maximum concentration to precision
gear changes, and accurately hitting braking markers from around 180mph.With lots of wheel ‘spinning-and-grabbing’
and maximum RPM gear changes, engines are stressed to their limit, with a lot
of blow-ups predicted.
It was Dan’s first time
here, and the first time I had ridden here since 1992 (Dan was just four years
old then). Coincidentally that was also a British Championship race, and on
that occasion I won with Malc Jackson ‘in the chair’.I had it relatively easy at that event - all the top UK teams
were away at a World Championship Grand Prix which clashed nicely, enabling us
to take the lead in the UK championship!Not so on this occasion; with nearly 90% of the field
being current or previous World Championship runners, and including the current
World Champions, this was going to be one tough series. In many ways, it will
be harder than this years World series.
It was also first time out for the bike this season.We were hoping for some time on the Dyno
beforehand, but this wasn’t possible.We’ve made some big alterations to both engine and chassis during the
winter, and we had to ‘guess’ at ignition and fuel maps for the engine
management, and gearing and suspension for the chassis.A few short test sessions on the Friday were
very welcome, and highlighted several glitches to be worked out.
QUALIFYING The first session ended prematurely after a major oil spillage, and
we found ourselves in third place.Not
bad, but we were disappointed to find that although our engine was quick, we
were giving a little speed away.The
‘good’ news was that we clearly had some major gains that could be made in time
- the engine was producing a lot of heat, which is often a sign of poor engine
management mapping.It would have to do
for this weekend, but we need to get this accurately dialled on the dyno…
The second session turned out to be something of a non-event for
us.As I lined the bike up for the run
up to the start line for our first flying lap, it suddenly lurched.I looked round to see Dan rolling and
bouncing down the track behind me!Fortunately, he had fallen out in the slowest part of the track.Unfortunately for Dan, this was also the
section where the entire sidecar paddock spectates.He wasn’t badly hurt, and jumped back on straight away to a huge
round of applause from the spectator bank.It’ll be a while before he’s allowed to forget that one!We were both edgy now, and not working well
together.We decided to abandon the
session.This dropped us to 5th
on the grid.Second row.Not too bad, and it could have been far
worse.The most significant injury was
to Dan’s pride.He openly admitted
making a mistake after misreading my intentions.Craig Chaplow pointed out that it takes a big man to admit when
he’s wrong.Even more so for a
passenger perhaps - ‘driver error’ is traditionally held to be the universal
cause of all mishaps. (Except by the drivers, of course).
THE FIRST 12 LAP RACE A cracking start shot us into third place off the line behind the
World Champion Reeves and the Birchall brothers, but we were soon
overhauled.First by Bryan ‘flower pot’
Peddar, then later TT hero Steve Norbury.We battled hard to stay in touch, but now we were in close proximity to
some fast teams we realised we had some chassis set-up to fine tune.In fact, not so ‘fine’ – we were all over
the place on several heart-in-mouth occasions, and settled into our comfortable
5th place, and a pleasing handful of points to at least get us off
the blocks.We also now had some good
indicators for improving the bike.
THE SECOND 12 LAP RACE
Ibadly fluffed the start and had to grab back at the clutch and have
another go.A fraction of a second
lost, but time enough to see us in the middle of the pack going into the fast
first corner.We kept a tight line in,
hanging off the brakes (possibly) too long.Luckily each time I thought we were going to be rear-ending someone,
they moved out of the way at the last minute.A bit of shunting about through turn 1, and we came out the other side
once more in 5thplace, with Bryan and Steve just up the road
again. With the set-up changes we had
made the bike felt much better balanced, and we were up for a battle.
Payback time.
We caught and passed Bryan somewhere on the second lap, and set about
catching Steve who (with new passenger Paul Knapton), was getting quicker each
lap and had already pulled a sizeable gap.Eventually we caught up, and I sat behind trying to plan a
strategy.Steve was quicker than us in
most places, and enormously faster braking into the left-right Esses at the end
of the main straight. We were relying
on making ground back on just the first two corners – not only very hard work,
but also creating a dilemma; If I passed Steve here, that left the best part of
a lap for him to re-pass, especially into the chicane where I knew already that
he was much quicker.The only real
option was to be first into that chicane.Bugger.Historically, moves like
the one I was now planning ultimately involve mind-bending doses of Pethidine
and weeks of hospital dinners.
Still, no point coming if we weren’t going to make an effort.
I waited behind patiently hoping we might
pressure Steve into a mistake.A long
shot, and it didn’t happen, so on the final lap, we tucked in a couple of
inches off the rear wheel of Steve’s Windle outfit.As we approached the braking zone, I moved us out of the
slipstream and willed myself not to touch the brakes until we had the
line.It’s great when a plan comes
together.We managed to pass the
Norbury Team at the most unlikely, fastest and most dangerous part of the track,
and survived.Steve fought back hard
for the remainder of the lap, but both Dan and I were using every defensive
move in our repertoire and managed to keep good track speed whilst doing so.We held our position to the finish line to
take our first podium place of the season.
Summary
A
difficult but delightful weekend.Superb and friendly organisation (Carol McBride, Mike Dommet et al),
sunshine hot enough to discolour our new, yet to be sign-written, paintwork
(bright new pearl white paintwork at the start of the weekend is now nicotine
yellow?! – we’re waiting to here back from the paint company chemist!) and
enthusiasm by the bucket load all made for a magical sidecar feast.
Great
to enjoy the spray of fizzy wine again even if from the bottom of the podium –
we’ve a whole season to go yet.
We
finished last season a bit short on ideas of where to go with development of
the bike.After a winter of
brainstorming, we’re now brimming with schemes to try out through the season.Those already implemented are working well,
and we know now what we need to do precisely dial those changes in.Roll on Round 2!
THANKS
Thanks as ever to our
2007 product sponsors and helpers (in alphabetical order): Agip Oils, Cheryl,
Danger UK graphics, Daytona Boots, Steve English & Ali (Photos), Goodridge
UK, Louis Christen (LCR), JEB’s Engineering (John Baker), all the Knights
(especially eldest daughter Lucy, who spent the weekend looking after us),
Lintek (FM Helmets), PAW Engineering, Ready Design, James Lister & sons, JP
Exhausts, and the O’Driscolls.
REMAINING ROUNDS (In red): 2007 British Championship Calendar:
Round 1April
14-15thSnetterton
Round 2June 3rdKnockhill
Round 3August
11-12thCadwell Park
Round 4September
29-30thBrand Hatch
Round
5 October 20-21stMallory Park
FROM MARCH 2007:
REDLINE
SUPERBIKES TEAM 37 CALENDAR
Last year,
we had the Fastest, Lightest and most Reliable machine in the World
Sidecar Championship.
We have
been working hard on the bike throughout the winter, and lots of innovative
modifications have made it Lighter, and hopefully Faster, whilst retaining the
reliability that ensured we were the only team to finish every World
Championship race during 2006.We will
use our 2006 engine initially this year.Our much-modified engine for 2007 will not be tried ‘in anger’ until mid
season – we still have some issues to resolve before we are entirely satisfied
that it is race-ready.
After a
great deal of deliberation, we have decided against contesting the 2007
Superside World Championship.This was
a difficult decision - all the more so since we started to go so well toward
the end of last season.But now Dan has
finished college, he has commitments to his new employer that have to be met,
and after three seasons of self-sponsored World Championship racing, we have
decided that ultimately we will be better off taking a year out to ‘re-group’
and settle both our careers. We hope to compete in one or two rounds as a 'Wild Card' team, time permitting.
THE GOOD NEWS Is that
2007 sees the launch of a brand new British Championship, organised by my
former passenger and multiple world Champion, Paul Woodhead in conjunction with
the UK Sidecar organising body, the FSRA.This series is our target for the 2007 season, and we have committed to
the full series.
With at
least HALF the World Championship field also contesting the British
Championship, our season still promises to be a tough one!
2007 FSRA British Sidecar Championship Calendar
1 Snetterton (MRO) 14/15
April
2 Knockhill (KDMC) 3rd
June
3 Cadwell (MRO) 11/12
August
4 Brands (MRO) 29/30
September
5 Mallory (Race of Year) 20/21 October
A big thank you to all
those who have agreed to help us during 2007, many of whom have already
contributed during the pre season preparations, and particularlyto Tony Eifflaender of PAW Engineering (http://www.eifflaender.com/index.htm) for his patience, insight, ideas and expertise:
Agip Oils, Danger UK graphics, Daytona Boots, Goodridge UK, Louis
Christen (LCR), JEB’s Engineering (John Baker), Frank Thomas (Arashi Helmets),
Lintek (EK Drive Chains), Ready Design, James Lister & sons, PAW Engineering, JP Exhausts,
all the Knights, the O’Driscolls, and Ben Sunners.
This
Site has been designed for 800x600 resolution and Macromedia
Flash Player 5.
________________________________________________________________________________
