| As pointed out above I have experience of racing in the wet, I have been at a couple of meetings which have been abandoned due to the wet conditions. One of which was Thruxton a couple of years ago, I thought it a strange decision as it was abandoned after the Streetstocks race which I was out in I was on Avon Azaros and haveing a fun time of it on my 130bhp Fireblade, waiting back in the holding area was my TL1000S on full wets ready for the next race which was the Sound of Thunder race which I was really looking forward to as in the streetstocks I was passing several riders per lap and relished the idea of going faster on the wets. But due to the amount of fallers in the Streetstocks race the meeting was abandoned, as I said I thought this a odd decision, especially as many of the fallers had been on Super Corsas and alike, poor tyre choice for the conditions.
in 2002 I was in a Sot race with North Glos and it started spitting as we were called to the collecting area as there had been short showers throughout the afternoon I had already opted for Dragon Evo's as a inter tyre while others including Whele went out on Super Corsas or Rennsports, at the start of the race they gained an advantage over me but as more and more rain fell I wheeled them in and passed Whele on his more powerful 996SPS then as I gained quickly on 6th place I found the rider had virtually come to a stop at the hairpin not wanting to make the turn on his SCs, I was rapidly approaching and had to try and avoid him while on the brakes, as it was a airfield circuit the dreaded overbanding made my front wheel breakaway and down I went heavily, my shoulder gave me grief for the next 6 months, my bike was damaged and why.
As I see it others made a bad tyre choice that caught them out and finally their error caught up with me.
For those that came to support me at Thruxton last year they saw that I had the 916 on paddock stands most of the time with the wheels out trying to work out what the weather was doing and make the right tyre choice.
And that is one of the problems - changable conditions - nothing more dangerous than a grid made up of bikes where some are on wets and others aren't as one will be the wrong tyre choice. We certainly can't be put in that position at the moment.
Yes this is all part of racing, but so are control tyres they are not new, its how the CB500 series started, didn't hurt Toseland any.
I do have spare wheels, I haver wets that will fit them I also have tyrewarmers but I am still happy with having a class that runs just on Diablos.
As I mentioned before if there were enough of us racing then maybe we could have two classes/grids, Budget class 583s on Diablos and a more costly class for 620/675 (properly tuned) with wets, warmers and Corsa type tyres.
Kev
I would enter the 583 class on the Diablos  |