With the British Championship third round at Brands Hatch cancelled, we now had the opportunity to squeeze in another much needed test session. We needed to ensure that the (many) glitches had been ironed out of our latest engine, and that we had made some progress with the recently manifest handling problems.

The Bank holiday meeting on our local Darley Moor near Ashbourne circuit looked promising. We hadn’t ridden here for years, and the lap record had been held by our old sparring partner Brian ‘Flower-pot’ Peddar since 2004. Perhaps if the weather was good we might be able to beat it. We also wanted to giver our support to our fellow Team, Craig Chaplow and Danny ‘Evo’ Evanson from Crewe.

PRACTICE & QUALIFYING

Good weather at Darley should never be taken for granted, and so it was that we awoke to golf-ball sized rain drops ricocheting off the van roof. But at least it was really warm rain.

Ah well. We needed to practice in the wet too.

The rain stopped, and we splashed about for a few laps until the rising humidity steamed

visors so badly we simply couldn’t see.

Still, it was enough and we had qualified on pole.

Chap and Evo had a clutch problem and qualified last, neatly corral-ing the field.

Race One

The track had more or less dried, but when the lights went out we sat with a rear wheel wildly spinning on the concrete start area surface, whilst a herd of outfits out-dragged us from the line. Once onto Tarmac proper, we got a good hook-up and barged up the inside into the first chicane a slightly bad mannered fashion. Good. We had the lead, and a clear track. We set about re-learning the circuit after our long absence and gradually got going quick enough to be amongst the back markers by the half way 4^th lap.

Very aware that this was a club race with some relatively and even completely inexperienced teams, we carefully picked our way through to comfortably take the win.

But we were a bit on edge until we saw the times. We had gone to try and take records, not just win.

Big smiles all round – we had taken the record by a gazzilionth of a second, and come within a whisker-from-a-well-shaven gnat of taking the 5-year old race record.

The icing on this particular race-cake was that our Team mates had come through from the very back to finish behind us, giving a Redline Superbikes One-Two.

Race Two

The race for the race record was on, and a slightly better start this time meant we almost kept a wheel on the track through the chicane. We had discussed some new techniques at length but the corners all felt messy and we reverted to our previous style and settled down. With the back markers hopefully this time expecting us and with a clear objective, we were a little less circumspect and enjoyed the challenge of trying to swiftly move through the pack to once again take the win.

Now we had to wait.

Result. Not only had we broken the long standing race record, we had smashed it by TEN seconds, given us a faster record for both the eight lap AND ten lap races!

And the Chaplow/Evo team came from the back once more to another fine second place.

 

A late season start at Donington Park for the World Series at least meant the weather should be a little better than when we raced here in the snow in March.

A savagely competitive field with true World class riders almost filling the grid for the first time in years and a clutch of talented and highly motivated ‘wild Cards’ meant we knew we were going to have our work cut out to be anywhere near the front of the grid.

We were pleased with our latest engine developments, but a handling problem with the bike was proving elusive, and was very pronounced on some of the long sweeping power-on corners at Donington.

PRACTICE & QUALIFYING

Went disappointingly as expected. Proud that after a year away from Superside our engines were still consistently fastest through the speed traps (and by some margin), we were left looking a little silly wallowing mid-field on the lap times. The sector time for the fast and scary Craner Curves sector put us fourth, confirming what we already knew – we couldn’t get the bike around the gradually opening right hand corners of McCleans and Coppice.

We eventually had to settle for a most unsatisfactory 9^th putting us on the fourth row.

Desperate times. We spent a large chunk of the night rebuilding already rebuilt suspension units and adjusting settings to extremes that should be too hard for all normal practical purposes. But this wasn’t normal.

The Race

It’s rained (or snowed) at every event we’ve competed in so far this year, so after a completely dry and relatively pleasant qualifying it was inevitable that an hour or so before the Sidecar race the heavens opened and heavy rain continued to fall as forecast. At least we knew we would be on ‘wets’, without any of the uncomfortable tyre-choice dilemma that showery weather produced.

We spent a frantic hour undoing the previous evenings work, and installed the softer settings that wet weather requires for any kind of traction.

We got a surprisingly good start, and found ourselves near the front into the first corner. Not that corners were anything this bike was going to be taking any notice of. Now whilst we both like a pint, the famous Redgate Pub located on the outside of turn one at Donington was not a welcome sight, and pretty much filling the extremities of my visor was starting to look like an awfully big hostelry. At the eleventh hour and at something close to a leisurely walking pace the bike finally turned in and we avoided the gravel trap. Trouble was of course just about everybody had gone past us meantime. We might as well have stopped for a pint afterall. We set off after the pack but it was hopeless. The previous problems were now magnified by the wet, and we were cornering at speeds so low we would have laughed had we not already been crying. It was a long cold race, and although we picked a few places up, we also lost one near to the end when the Scottish team of Gordon Shand took the opportunity to nip inside as we moved out of the way of the leaders when we were blue-flagged.

I final finish position of 10^th was disappointing, but at least gave us a valuable 6 points.

Summary

Circuit Grobnik is set amongst a spectacular backdrop of towering White Mountains, with the Adriatic Sea in the distance. 2.59 miles in length, with some 14 corners, races are run anti-clockwise meaning lots of the left-hand bends that make sidecar racing so visually spectacular. With none of the stop-start 'bus stops' and chicanes of the 'Formula One' circuits, but with very fast, technical corners and a monstrously abrasive, tyre shredding surface, this is one of the most demanding circuits physically for both rider and passenger.

Just to add to the fun, the region is typically very hot (35°C plus during August) and very humid on account of the notorious flash storms.

The Redline Team has juggled hard all season to balance handling with an engine producing a lot of power, but lacking the all essential strong torque needed for effective drive out of the corners. This was making the bike difficult and tiring to ride, not to mention hazardous with extreme over-steer constantly threatening to catch us out.

Preceded by 40 hours of non-stop driving across eight countries, this was not going to be an easy weekend.

PRACTICE & QUALIFYING

A combination of pavement-cracking heat and torrential rain saw us eventually on the fourth row of the grid qualifying 9^th, a whole second slower than our previous qualifying time 2-years ago. Our best 2006 time would have only moved us up one spot on the grid, even though it put us on the front row in that year. This didn’t feel like any sort of consolation.

Race 1, The ‘Match’ Race series.

Previous years have seen up to four of the complicated ‘Match’ race knock-out type contests. Moving up through the short, sharp 3-lap heats depending not just on heat wins, but also race times. In the past we have been rather disadvantaged in these by being the one of the slowest of the faster teams. This continually left us exposed to being eliminated early on by the top 4 or 5 teams in the world.

This season however, we were the fastest of the slower riders, and in theory should be able to take advantage of a race designed to give lesser teams a chance to grab some significant points. Of course to compound our season’s woes, the 2008 Superside Championship had only one Match race and not four, so we needed to maximise this opportunity.

And so it was we found ourselves on pole in the second (of four) quarter finals, and with a good chance of a win or race time fast enough to carry us through to the semi finals, immediately giving as a load of points, and with a good chance of even more.

We queued at the exit to the pit lane and watched the first quarter final, made up of the slowest teams. It’s rained (or snowed) at every event we’ve competed in so far this year, so it was no surprise that we also watched the traffic on the nearby motorway throwing up increasingly large plumes of water spray as a sudden downpour headed our way out of a blue sky. As we splashed out of the pit lane, a ‘wet-race’ board was put out. Round at the start, we were told that we could change to wet tyres if we could do so in two minutes. Unlike a modern race car, a Formula one sidecar has to have all the bodywork (fairings) removed before wheels can be changed. This makes changing wheels in 120 seconds almost impossible, thus outrageously forcing the teams to start a road race in torrential conditions on slick tyres.

Thankfully there were no disasters. I hope the organisers have good insurance, because sometime soon this kind of irresponsible pressure on teams to keep to schedule will result in a serious injury or of course much worse. This completely overlooking the fact that to stop a race because of a serious crash can take an hour or more out of the schedule as opposed to five or six minutes on the grid.

We don’t ride well in the wet, in spite of many laps of practice through this season. So whilst we got away reasonably well in 2^nd, we were soon overhauled by Slovenian Milan Spendal riding his ‘local’ circuit, and passengered by a former passenger of mine, Pete Hill (UK). This was a complete disaster. But we had no safe and effective response. With the race of the slowest teams run in the dry (and consequently far faster than our race in the wet on slicks), we were out of the contest at the first hurdle. Eventually classified 14^th, we picked up a meagre two points.

This was a 20-lap race, with now fairly comfortable conditions. Hot (around 30°C) but not unbearable.

A horribly mediocre start and a lot of pushing and shoving in the first turn saw us drop down near the back of the field from our 9^th place start. We spent a few laps picking up some places, and managed to chase down Milan, riding hard on his home turf and desperate to impress his sponsors who were attending the meeting, he in turn was hounding Alan ‘Scud’ Schofield in 9^th, and the two teams were pushing a healthy pace. After our chase through from the back we started suffering some tyre overheating resulting in big and long slides which slowed us considerably and Scud and Milan started to pull away. We couldn’t respond, and settled for keeping Finlands Johan Reuterhalt (TNT Finland sponsored Team) at bay. A lonely race followed and a couple of casualties up the pack boosted our final result to 9^th.

Once again though, we managed to hang on to our 10^th place overall in the World Championship. With just the final round at Le Mans to go it is highly unlikely that we can improve on this, and whilst that won’t stop us trying our hardest, we also have to pay a lot of attention to the Teams close behind us.

The British Championship was to close at the Snetterton circuit in Norfolk. Due to our World Championship commitments, we have missed over half of the British series, so we went to the final round with no chance of a worthwhile championship placing, and were just going for the racing. But with our current less-than-ideal form, and an impressively competitive field we were only to aware that we were going to have to ride hard and fast to even be in the top ten this weekend, never mind anywhere near the podium.

PRACTICE & QUALIFYING

Friday afternoon was allocated to testing, and we had a number of alterations and modifications that we wanted to try out. Nothing major, but weather permitting a good opportunity for some relaxed testing. Yet again, ‘weather permitting’ turned out to be ‘weather NOT permitting. It chucked it down all night and all day, so no worthwhile testing.

Saturday qualifying saw us struggling to get close to our normal times for this circuit, but we were encouraged to find we had qualified 5^th (2^nd row of the grid). But it was only a few tenths of a second in front of hard-riding Simon Gilbert, with Mark Howard drafted in to replace the hospitalised Rick Long.

Race 1

A messy start left us floundering a little and we dropped to 7^th. We managed to pull back a place and found ourselves immediately behind Championship leaders and World Champions Reeves/Farrance, and another World Championship team, the Hegarty Brothers riding as a wild-card. Leading were the three highly motivated National teams of Gatt/Reeves, Peddar/Steadman, and Simon Gilbert all in contention for the title having ridden all rounds and all riding hard. Hard enough to pull quite a considerable gap. Reeves eventually upped the pace and battled through to take the lead. We gradually closed the gap, and managed to overhaul Gilbert, holding onto our fifth place until the last lap, when ‘Flower-Pot’ Peddar blew up leaving us in what we thought was a well deserved fourth.

Race 2

With Peddar/Steadman on their way home in a van full of very expensive scrap, we now only had Reeves and Gatt in front of us on the grid with Hegartys alongside.

A better start this time, but nowhere near as good as Gilbert who shot through from the third row to take the lead. We out-dragged Reeves, then out-braked Hegartys and squeezed past Gatt into the first turn to find ourselves in second place. This was looking more promising. Reasonably confident that with a bit of a tow down the super-long straight our superior power would enable us to pass Gilbert and take the lead. A highly agreeable state of affairs. Unfortunately we hadn’t allowed for the Hegartys coming alongside us into turn two, and with nowhere to go but the dirt we lost the place to Hegarty, then Gatt came through just as we gathered it all together again. Dam-it!

The tow-technique was nonetheless applied to Gatty, and from around 170mph, we managed to out-brake that crew into the almost-stop hairpin.

Whilst busy concentrating on chasing the Hegartys, we were only too aware that Gatt would also be looking for any opportunity to pass us, and kept a tight line into the chicane to block a move up the inside. Not tight enough it seemed.

An all-but- forgotten and now hard charging Reeves had not only passed Gatt, but now somehow careered up the inside of us. We took the chicane a very untidy two-abreast, with a lot of grass and kerb being used by both teams. We came out of the chicane behind Reeves, but with possibly a better-settled bike.

Now we may not be the fastest team in the world (yet), but it’s some small consolation to know that frequently the fastest sidecar on the planet gets wheeled out of our humble garden shed in Macclesfield. With retirement age looming (for Team 37’s driver, at least), we don’t often get to overtake the multiple World Champions. But this would be a good test of engine performance, and we were not going to miss the opportunity. Thus it was that we managed to out-drag Reeves up the incline of the start-finish straight to turn 1.

Knowing it just wasn’t going to be that easy, we stretched our braking marker as far as bottoms and tyres were judged to hold up. Reeves fired up the inside of us anyway, with the bike already sideways just as we turned in. Very impressive stuff. Reeves and Farrance are not World Champions for nothing.

We simply didn’t have sufficient pace to stay with them, but we soon both passed Gilbert, and Reeves want on to pass Hegartys to win the race and the British Championship for 2008.

We battled hard to keep former British Champions Gatt/Randall at bay. At that point lying second in the Championship, this was to be their last race before retiring from the sport and they were understandably on a mission. A small error was all that was required to let them steal past us, and we couldn’t raise an effective response leaving us fourth again.

The Gilbert/Howard team (of the impressive fast start) were deemed to have made a jump-start and given a ten-second penalty, dropping them to 8^th but anyway gaining enough points to lift the F1 Cup Championship.

Summary

The closing round of the 2008 Superside Sidecar World Championship was to be held at the historic French circuit of Le Mans.

Curiously, the event also incorporated a round of the World Championship Truck Grand Prix.

Le Mans is a technically demanding circuit, with no less than four hairpin corners, some very fast sweeping curves, and a couple of fast chicanes for good measure.

We have pretty much stayed around 10^th in the standings for the World Championship all year but we needed to finish this race no further than three places behind our nearest rival, Slovenian Milan Spendal to maintain our top-ten position on the World.

PRACTICE & QUALIFYING

A few laps of practice on Friday afternoon gave us a hint of gearing and suspension settings, very helpful since we had three sessions the following day, two of which were for qualifying.

It’s good to have fast engines, and we enjoy development whilst trying not to stray to far from sound principles or common sense. This mostly results in us having amongst the most competitive engines that are mercifully reliable. We have always been proud of the fact that in five seasons, we have finished every race we have started. But under racing conditions things are highly stressed and sometimes just break.

That ‘sometime’ for us was on lap four of the first (un-timed) session. A crankshaft counter-weight burst deep within the engine sending shrapnel through and throughout the crankcase. Critically, large chunks of steel were fired into the gearbox locking the back wheel and slewing us toward the Armco barrier. At one of the fastest sections of the track, this was not a pleasant experience. After much frantic clutch pumping and kicking at gear lever (that must only have lasted a milli-second) the rear wheel half-freed, and sounding like a commercial cement mixer at double speed full of bricks and glass bottles, we juddered and slithered our way to an inelegant stop.

For only the second event in four years we thankfully had a spare engine. But it wasn’t complete, needing some specialist ‘sidecar’ parts to be removed from the blown engine after it was removed, then cleaned, then fitted to the new engine which in turn had to be refitted to the chassis. That’s about three hours hard work, and we had about half that before the first qualifying session. With all hands on, a blur of activity saw us on track about half way into the twenty minute session. But the bike was making a lot of smoke. Dan said later he turned round to ensure we weren’t leaving a trail of oil, but couldn’t see the track for the smoke. We pulled back into the pits and found that in our haste a small oil-seal had been ‘pinched’, and was allowing oil to pump out onto the hot exhaust. Clearly a fire hazard, we abandoned the session.

All was resolved for the second session, and we were thankful for the good weather. Most final qualifying sessions this year have been wet, making qualification in the first session essential. In that respect, we got lucky (?).

With so few laps, rough chassis settings and less than ideals tyres, we were reasonably happy to have qualified 11^th on row five, about half way down the grid. We knew we could go quicker yet with a bit more time and practice.

6th in morning warm-up indicated that this might be the case.

A poor-ish start saw us drop down a few places off start, butt we soon picked up the pace, passing and dropping first the French wild-card team and then Spendal, in the process catching Alan ‘Scud’ Schofield who was already into a battle with the (5^th overall) Swiss team of Jos Moser. Just as we joined in the fun, an unlikely few drops of water splashed across my visor. Since we were still riding in bright sunshine, rain seemed unlikely and a few seconds later a punch in the ribs from Dan suggested we might have a problem. I pretended I hadn’t noticed and continued at race pace through the next series of turns, but didn’t try any passing manoeuvres. After a more savage pummelling from Dan, it became apparent that our race was probably over, and we pulled into the pits. Yelling through helmets above the sound of race engines, it seemed that Dan had suddenly been covered in hot water, and was unable to get any grip on the platform. But I had been watching the engine temperature after the first few spots on my visor, and it seemed stable. We re-entered the race, and over four laps clawed our way back up to 13^th position.

Big Thanks as always to all our 2008 product sponsors and helpers (in alphabetical order):