Well that blew the cobwebs away
Apart from the sight of Yeti standing by his beautiful bike on the grass at Charlies 1 that is. Poor begger went down for what sounds like no apparent reason other than cold tyres and a cold track, strange one. He got it fixed and was straight back out though. (gorgeous bike mind you).
Mark an I did a bit of rescue/recovery in the No Limits van. There were a few fallers, all lowsides, pretty much all at low speeds, minimal damage and nobody hurt. It wasn't as cold as we anticipated, but the track temp was still bleedin cold and we had a hail-storm part way through just as it had got totally dry as well.
Dried up again enough to really go for it, then another short burst of rain. More dry skies, but the track then didn't have time to get totally dry again.
By 4.00pm everyone had had enough track time and there was one bloke left on circuit. He had booked on the ACU group and the Fast/Inters group and had done 13 sessions. As there was nobody out and nobody came down for the next fast session at all, we didn't chequer it, just left him out there wondering if he would come in or run out of fuel, he must have had a heck of a day.
So by just after 4.00pm, nobody else was coming down, they'd all had 6 sessions with an hour still to go, so I couldn't turn down the opportunity of an empty Cadwell and the old shed sitting there patiently with the tyre warmers on, so off I went for a few laps on my own. Poor marshalls thought they'd finished for the day until they heard me start it up. They all had a look out of their boxes, saw it was me and crawled back in out of the cold - it was like a ghost town.
I did a few laps on a damp track at a reasonable speed, having lods of fun until I think the heat in my tyres must have started to disappear as after about 5 laps it started to get slippy. I came over the mountain, front wheel off the ground and the back end spun up big time - the bike went to one side and my foot came off the peg, bottom off the seat - that was the sign to come in.
Guido was there as the No Limits photographer for the day, so had a good few chats with him, Also Yeti of course, plus ChrisP came down to watch - good to see you mate and of course the main man JR was there, so met him and had a long chat about racing and trackdays - what an absolute top, top bloke he is, as is his Dad.
Highlight of the day for me was having a go on my mates 748. Oh that felt good, I'd forgotten just how stable a bike they are, even on cold road tyres in the damp, I was giving it some berries and it behaved superbly. Hmmmmm....
Really looking forward to two weeks today on Sunday 12 March, back at Cadwell again.....bring it on
WeeJohnyB