Motorcycle Drag Racing Team
As we battle with a press release, and look out and see it's pouring down with rain again, we can only be thankful how very lucky we were with four days of fantastic weather over the European Finals.......
Kev writes.....
Q1 Straight out of the trailer, first round, on a bye, 7.87 @ 167.9 mph, and a 1.23 sec 60 foot. This was not a bad starting run for me, and had me at number 1 qualifier for a least 30 seconds ! The bike is still not 60 footing, and the data logger is not helping by showing corrupt data. At present we are trying to tune the bike by what I feel and what Gipp and Chris see. Back to pits, serviced the bike and make a few tiny changes to help me and the bike hopefully get some better 60's.
Q2 Left lane against Elvira Karlsson. My reaction time was not as good as the first, launched ok, but the bike has some smoke escaping, which we initially thought was from the rocker cover. Shifted into 2nd gear, and realised that I did not have the bike on full throttle - my bad! Back on full throttle for the rest of the run, cursing myself all the way up, under my helmet. Back to the pits, and decided that we would need to go right through the motor to find what was causing the smoke, and where we thought what must be a leak, was. We needed to find exactly where.
Q3 We missed this qualifier, the first one on Saturday, as we were still working on the bike, making doubly sure that we had cured the leak.
Q4 Leak cured, and another bye. A good reaction, still lacking on the 60 foots, happy no mechanical problems, but no improvement as I ran another 7.8 and still struggling to improve as the data logger was still acting up.
Sunday First round Eliminations I had Fredrik Fredlund. This was going to be an uphill race! Freddy had been running pretty consistant 7.1's most of the weekend, a very good racer, with much more experience than me, in this Pro Stock malarky - but I would give it my best shot! I got away first with an .05 to his .08, but after that it was all Freddy ! Many congratulations to him on the event win, and the Number 1 plate in the Pro Stock Bike European Championship 2012. As for us? Still no bloody data! So home we went.
Thanks to the Team - Richard Gipp and Nigel Sadler, my Crew Chief Chris Pyke, and my other half Lizzy. Thanks also to our Sponsors - Richard Stephens at MPM Oil UK, Doug at Ensys and Steve at Motorshack.
We must also thank Eurodragster for the data and the commentators, Daryl and Colin, over the weekend, you guys do an awesome job!
Now we are getting organised for the National Finals which is back at Santa Pod on the 22/23rd September. We have all three of the Team out for this one. Myself in Pro Stock Bike, Lizzy will be in Comp bike, we are in the process of getting her motor built up now all the parts are back, and Jake in Junior Drag bike. We have not attempted all three of us out at the same time - This will be one to watch!!.
Photo Thanks Lizz McCarthy