Motorcycle Drag Racing Team
Wednesday 29 August 2012
Jake Charman
Shakespeare County Raceway
After a while of downtime since the last official meeting I was looking forward to some competitive racing, we arrived at Shakey on Friday and it was already raining! But spurred on by the previous rain offs we went ahead and put the awning up, got the bikes out etc.
Saturday certainly didn’t set a good mood for the weekend, even despite the track crew’s efforts to dry the track only a few classes actually got out sadly not including Junior Bike!
Photo Thanks Lizz McCarthy Sunday began with Comp Bike out first and glorious sunshine! Junior Bike where out a few classes later and we decided on a dial of 9.87 and I ran 10.11 which we put down to rider error as for some reason (still don’t know to this day!) I didn’t ping the clutch, I just dumped it! So, next run out we used the same dial in but despite a correct launch I ran 10.11 again, so we put in a new spark plug and dialled a 10.12 for the final qualifier. Now, I don’t know how much power a new plug makes, but I pinged the clutch and the chain broke! Back to the pits, repaired for eliminations in the morning.
Because of the problems in the last qualifier I wanted to have a bit of leeway so changed the dial in to a 10.10 (sorry to Lizzy as she had to run about trying to find a pen!). Liam had dialled in a 15.00, so I rolled into stage and settled in for a five second wait. I won and got through to the next round. I would like to say well done to Liam as he was very close to his dial in and it was a very close race! My next run was against Louis so we had almost identical dial ins, unfortunately when I launched the bike went up on the bars and the footpeg hit the back of my foot, which I think turned the bike left a tad. In my attempts to catch up with Lou I broke out! Unfortunately though the final didn’t get run because of poor weather making 4/5 meetings rained off!
As always thanks to my sponsors, Uncle Steve at Motorshack and Alan at RCP Training. Also to Dad and Lizz for crewing and to the track crew for keeping the track going despite the rain.