[skidlids]

Pembrey April 2004-04-05

Arrived Thursday evening with my mate Dallas and set up in the top end of the paddock. After 6 years of riding various Ducati’s Dallas now has a R1 with Ohlins all round, full Micron system, rearsets etc, where as this year I am starting the season on a R6 which up until this weekend had never seen a short circuit, its engine and induction system is totally standard, the main mods being Ohlins shock and steering damper pinched off last years TT bike and a set of Harris rearsets.
After setting up our pit area and having something to eat and wondered the paddock catching up with fellow racers that we haven’t seen over the winter break. Eventually I came across WJB and Monty unloading the car and getting out the new awning/marquee/house and gave them a hand to set it up before heading for my bunk.
Friday was practice day for which both Dallas and WJB were booked in. Dallas took to the track with a view to just refreshing his memory of it as he hasn’t been there for over a year and on his last 2 visits has had a couple of offs, one involving broken ankles and ribs. After several sessions Dallas was down in to the 1min 11s and feeling comfortable, so it was time to try a few tweaks to the bike. Made a small change to the rear shock length to increase the rear ride height. This resulted in lap times dropping to 1min 10s with Dallas happy in that he was getting both knees down for the first time ever at Pembrey. We decided to try for a little more rear ride height but this resulted in slower lap times and Dallas reporting the bike was not so confidence inspiring, so we put it back to the previous setting. It looked as if we needed to lower the gearing as only 4 gears were being used but sadly the race vans didn’t have the necessary front sprocket, a change of rear wasn’t possible as the wheel was already fully forward and would have required a new chain. So Dallas just did a couple of more sessions with the bike as it was eventually getting in to the mid 1’09 bracket. And after 80 or so laps the Pirelli Diablo Corsas were holding up well. This time compares to his previous best of 1’07 on his 916 Strada race bike using slicks in the middle of summer.

As for Monty and WJB, I’ll leave it to them to tell you about their tales of woe.

Saturday was race day and my turn on track I had the bike scrutinised on the Friday evening and after getting my clothing done I signed on and got my practice pass. Following a very rainy night the track was fairly wet so I decided on a wet front and a intermediate rear. When I got out in practice (3rd group of the day) the track was a real mix of wet and dry patches but didn’t feel to bad on my choice of tyres the only dodgy feeling bit was the braking area into the hairpin which was fairly dry and the block pattern on the front wet was squirming around a lot causing me to have to brake earlier than I wanted. The result was 21st place on the grid and about 8 seconds off the times of the front row guys. After coming in I decided to get the Super Corsa removed from my spare front and fit an intermediate instead.
Race 1 took up my place on the grid on a drying track with some damp patches and a wet hairpin where a oil spill had been cleaned up. I got a average start and joined the rest of the Queue at the hairpin/bottleneck. I was a lot happier with my tyre choice and track conditions and slowly improved my lap times getting down to below 1’ 10.5 secs, sadly this wasn’t quite quick enough to stop me getting lapped by the race winner and the next 5 riders. I need to lap in the 1’08s to avoid this happening, which is a time I was doing last year on the Ducati. However I came off he track happy with my progress on the R6 as this is the first time I have raced it and there is still a lot of set-up to do. I felt with a few more dry races I would get the ride heights right and then look at fitting lower gearing and go from there as I was very happy with my lap times first time out and with the bikes ability to change direction and hold a tight line.
Sadly to say the rest of the weekend was wet races for me and following he odd big slide, a misting visor and a clash with another rider no further progress was made.

Still the weekend was far from a disaster the bike has good potential I just need some dry track time to get it dialled in and closer to the set-up of the other R6 that I parted with the weekend before.
So a list of things to do is now in place, and includes things like fitting single rate Ohlins fork springs, race compound brake pads, stiffen rear end, adjust ride height (lower) and buy a few more sprockets.

High lights of the weekend was watching the Ianh winning the Powerbike on his 998 and both he and Les Liney putting in some very good rides in the SoT races.