Cadwell Park, August, Round 6

A run of "premium" tracks was always going to make this a great couple of months riding if the weather and bike kept summery and ring-ding-dingy respectively. Oulton, Brands GP, a track day at Donington and now Cadwell was certainly giving me a good lot of tracktime at my personal favourite circuits.

The Donington trackday was a bit "iffy" weather wise but had a great couple of sessions out in the fast group on my 21 year old 250cc roadbike (still have to pinch myself about that bit!). I certainly wasn't particularly willing to push it too hard in the damp conditions as a load of hassle putting the thing back together for the Cadwell race wasn't really in the gameplan. A couple of warning slides at Schwantz and Coppice were enough to make me not go any faster in those sessions if not back off as such. What I've found with the racing is that learning circuits is coming a LOT easier than it ever used to in many years of trackdaying, but it is a slightly different experience in the "bubble" of being out there with bikes about the same as you're on or maybe a bit faster if you count the 400 experience at Oulton. I certainly went round Donny quick enough to harass slower ridden R1s and the like - somewhat akin to what I'm used to seeing my former racer friend Nick Bailey do on his SV650 at trackdays - outbrake, get wasted on the straight, rinse and repeat at the next corner. The less confident riders tend to give up after about half a lap to a lap of that kinda thing.

But in the couple of dry sessions I did get I couldn't get anywhere near the kind of times I know would have happened if there had been other YPMs around me. Shows how much I'm using my racing buddies as a gauge rather than off my own bat really! Still, my garage mates for the day and the marshals quite enjoyed watching the nostalgic stuff of 80s bike-mad teenagers' dreams hanging in there with much more modern kit - flat out in top down Craner Curves in the dry sessions still feels pretty quick on the old girl! Grin inducing moment of the day was a well ridden R1 that came past on the brakes into Melbourne when I was braking moderately late myself. "ooh, ambitious" thunk I - lots of squirming around and air under the rear tyre on his part and... he missed the turn-in point by yards! He took till Schwantz curve to get me back again but disappeared quite rapidly after that. Good fun - when we doing the SV vs TZR trackday Nick?

So onto Cadwell Park aka Wasp City by the end of the weekend - thousands of the feckin things!! The weather was looking fairly promising for most of the weekend so what really was I hoping to achieve this time out after some encouraging progress this year? A pep talk from Leggy (Mark Legg) who I'm firmly blaming for encouraging me into this YPM hooliganism convinced me I should be doing better still. At least this track I'd done once before even if the 'blade did expire in the first proper session leaving me with a rather more fun race prepped ZXR400 for the rest of the day's play. Videos a la Nick B exist of that day in 2006 and times were in the order of 1:55 in the dry sessions we had at the beginning of the day on both expiring 'blade and rudely healthy ZXR400. So trounce that time had to be aim 1. The other aim was my current rivals in "the train" in the shape of Ben Miles, Craig Jennings and Chris Wallace. I can stay with them but being quite similar in terms of laptimes seem to get taken by them and not be able to work out a way back past and it's part of a train that goes all the way from 9th to 16th in a lot of races.

Haven't done a great deal to the bike in the last couple of rounds - got the forks how I like them after having the dampers modded and playing with air gaps and the like and having the seals done. The new exhausts made in a shed on a farm near Plymouth were fitted at Oulton and work superbly though they have plenty of scrapes and dents now as they're not so hot on ground clearance. The brakes are now the limiting factor and Jerry Pell has some slightly modified Ducati pads as a solution for the stock caliper in conjunction with an EBC disc. Sadly he didn't have the pads with him at Cadders so I'll have that improvement to look forward to, and putting a linkage shift in to reverse the shift pattern is still to be done.

Practice was on Friday afternoon for me - first session out was dry then it teemed it down just as we went out for lap 1 of the second sesh. Soaked leathers, standing water, the works so abandoned that one. Sesh 3 was drying and sesh 4 mostly dry except Barn so got a few decent laps in. Really didn't get anyone to play with though as my normal rivals were taking things suspiciously steady so went straight past and didn't find anyone else about the same speed to have a hoon with. 42 rear gearing was leaving me at peak power before even seeing the 300m board so whacked a 41 in and some new tyres and good to go!

So, onto race 1 on Saturday and .... a flipping big wheelie off the line - bollox! Been suffering mild clutch slip all year and didn't know what the problem was. Changed the oil for some Halfords stuff and hey presto no clutch slip in practice so the Rock oil Taymar favours is evidently the issue. However, with the solution to that came a very different feeling clutch off the startline that was gonna take a little getting used to. Found myself among some rather unfamiliar folk and fought my way up to 15th quite quickly but the usual crew were edging out in front until lap 5 when we found Spencer Reeves and his yellow bike in the middle of the track at Hall Bends and all got split up, so ended up with no real battle - 10secs behind my usual rivals with Griggsy at the rear and the next person 10secs behind. Hot and knackered after about 5 laps fighting the bike too! Still, in the points and a 1:51.1 so smashed the best I'd managed on the 400 in 2006 so aim 1 out of the way.

Race 2 and still scorching sunshine, got a somewhat better start from a not particularly favourable grid position and got boxed in a bit into Coppice. This year they'd decided to make Cadwell a 3 bike row instead of 4 like most tracks which did make turn 1 somewhat less hectic than it apparently used to be. Stayed with the pack and found myself in no mans land again after a couple of laps, just keeping with people but not really closing up on them. After a bit of a horlicks at Park on the last lap thought I was gonna bag Craig Jennings but he managed to get back on the black stuff before I got him! 13th and a 1:50.07 so a few points and definite progress on the stopwatch.

The problems I found were I was tense and fighting the bike going into the Gooseneck and putting more effort and less speed into Hall Bends than I needed to, so tootled off for a watch of the fast 400s and the minitwins for inspiration, which proved useful on Sunday! Wunderkind Danny Buchan on the 400s was just so fast and smooth through Hall Bends it kind of clicked what I had to do. Watching the rookie open class with a beer and some fine YPM fellows - new buddy Tom Scheving, an American Air Force type riding a bog-stock SP1 I met at Snett no 2 earlier in the year was getting on reasonably well - there was an R1 going round at what looked a snails pace, nigh on upright on any bend we could see him on. Had a look at the timesheets after the race and he was doing 2:15. Gulp. On an R1 ferchrissakes! Given the front runners were doing 1:37s the differential was a tad dangerous!

And then another social gem courtesy of the friendly club members. Saturday evening is a big event at Cadwell dreamt up last year apparently. A couple of the YPM wives/girlfriends went round collecting curry orders during the day, everyone turned up in the evening with their tables, chairs and beer and the ladies returned at the allotted hour with a large car boot full of curry and hey presto a 90-head street party! Cracking evening, helped obviously by a welcome return to form by the British summer. Steve Higerty aka "Leslie Ash" had taken a swig from his Red Bull earlier in the day and found a wasp already having a go at it so it promptly stung him on the lip for his trouble - so plenty of sympathy on tap as you might expect from a bunch of bike racers and tales of wasp body counts through the day - pesky critters!

Sunday and another good sunny day to play on the tarmac. Race 1 started in a better grid slot and got away with the people I wanted to but spent a frustrating race behind Nick Griggs and Adrian Grove - Nick was clearly holding Adrian up but Ade couldn't work a way round him so I couldn't work out a way past the pair of them! Eventually Adrian pounced and I tried my damnedest to make my own move but Nick hurried up after that and the places I had been lining up weren't available any more! I got alongside coming out of Barn and nearly got a wheel in front but failed by a mere 0.055s! 14th and the last lap push got me a 1:48.9 so another good chunk off the time with a lot more comfortable feel on the bike.

And thence to the last race of the weekend. Went out in the right frame of mind i.e. quite fired up and determined not to fall in behind a Nick/Adrian roadblock whose times I could stay with quite easily. Got a great start and past a few round Charlies and slotted in behind Tony Hoare (brisk) and John Parbury (top 5 usually). Tagging onto that lot dragged the lap times down really quickly and past Ben Miles and Chris Wallace during lap 2 (my fastest of the weekend). I found Tony's pace was actually quite do-able this time round so prepared to tag on and see if I could line up a pass near the end of the race. No such luck - first Ben Miles and then Craig tried charging up the inside at a couple of corners and came out so slowly I could get them straight back. We lost Tony H and that was the way it went the whole rest of the race - it was scrappy and the lap times went completely to pot but it was straight duking it out all the way to the line. Craig missed a gear at the top of the mountain so he got dispatched going into Hall, then I made a right mess of the approach to the hairpin and ended up on the grass just where you need to brake. The hairpin was err interesting and slightly out of control but I made it through without getting passed back amazingly. Then a black bike with an orange bibbed rider came through at Park on the last lap and managed to get himself in a position I couldn't get him straight back in spite of the slow line through the corner. That's alright, he's a 17 year old who's never been this fast round here and enthusiasm will get the better of him by the end of the lap won't it? It didn't, he held me off to the line and beat me by 0.8secs in the end. Precocious little git! BUT I'd beaten the three main rivals and had a great battle doing it. So 9th - in the dry - fastest lap of 1:48.1.

The fastest TZR was down in the 1:45s and the fastest all weekend got a 1:44.9. So I'm getting there, 2.5-3secs off the pace of the fastest guys still leaves a bit of work to do but bearing in mind that was a 5-6sec gap at a roughly equivalent laptime to Brands GP it's definitely somewhat nearer the mark. Roll on Brands Indy no 2 at the end of September!