Ducati Sporting Club UK > DesmoDue Race Series > DesmoDue - General Questions and Chat > Castle Coombe write up?

[TP]

It may as well have stayed in French for all the sense it made to me!

Chris, here's a brief report for the day.

Noise testing was interesting. A few of us failed, I think fil2 and Ali failed? Tim and Tonio were both on 105db and told they would watched! My bike sounded louder but measured 101.8db! Happy with that, I was getting very worried as we were rolling up to the measuring station. If that's a metre that he's taking those measurements from then I'm about 8 metres tall!

First impressions of the track are that it's BUMPY! In the first two sessions I wasn't even holding it pinned down the straight because I didn't want to find a big bump and get flung off! You can hold it pinned though and wander around a bit - you just have to ride it out and try and focus your vision because it goes a bit blurry! I backed off my rear shock a bit and it made it a lot better.

Over Avon rise into Quarry is also pretty bumpy and it's your braking zone. So you'll be coming in there somewhere in the region of 120mph and braking for a 3rd gear corner over some pretty bumpy stuff - that was interesting! Other than that you seem to be hard on the brakes or the throttle is wide open. Some sections flow together really nicely, like the esses all the way through to Tower and it feels good to be just be changing up and keeping it pinned all the way through there. Tower is faster than it looks and you do that in 4th. Then you've got another chicane and they are all pains in the arse!

The points where most people will make time (or lose it) are into Quarry and Tower where you are braking from maxed out in 5th (mine's a 5 speed) into third gear for quarry and 4th for Tower. In fact for Tower you don't really need to brake that much but I never got it right. I always felt I could go quicker through there. And Quarry. Pretty much everywhere actually!

Hope that helps.