Cheers boys, it is genuinely good to know people read it and yeah, I've been a bit tardy on this one (not as tardy as my Spain mini tour / GS review though, if I ever do that) as my Angelesey round has been and gone a couple of weeks ago , so it's time I updated this thread I think
Rolling it back a bit to bike prep, as I mentioned above, at the previous (Pembrey) round, although I had an absoloutely cracking last race on the old girl, according to the club dyno I was missing a good few HP, and good as the motor felt, the race did seem to bear the dyno figures out as I seemed to be lacking a bit at the top end, so even though I have decided No1 bike is effectively now No2, I thought I'd have a little bit more of an investigation.
First thing was to have the back of the airbox off and just check that it hadn't ingested any woodland creatures, or the filter element had collapsed etc-
That all looked OK, apart from a bit of oil blowback in there from the breather, but what looking in through the airbox did also show was carb #3 flooding slightly, so off the carbs came for an investigation.
All looked good, and the float needle valves were replaced with gnuine ones a year ago, so the (non -removable) float valve seat in #3 got a clean up and polish with a cotton bud and some fine grinding paste and autosol before float heights were checked on all carbs , the airbox got a clean and it all went back together.
As for TB, aside from the cursory nut and bolt & brakes check and clean that they both always get between rounds, the forks came out for fresh Motul 20W oil as for whatever reason the (Bremen Autotecnik 20W for anyone that's interested) oil seemed to have lost viscosity, or at least the forks had lost some of their admittedly limited damping. The oil that came out , although it had only been in there a couple of months, was very thin and pissy- not sure why as it came from a brand new sealed bottle, but suffice to say I won't be buying it again.
I also needed to add a bit more preload to the (9.5) fork springs, which now that the tech regs are slightly relaxed means I could do it the lazy-man way and treat it to a pair of these non-OEM eBay beauties, which to be fair, seem half decent quality and give me a window of approx 50-60mm without having to fanny about making up and swapping in different length spacers .
I also changed the rear suspension dogbones in it to raise the rear ride-height a bit – just a few mm different bones makes many times more difference in ride height, I've got a few, and I settled on a pair that gave me an increase of 23mm in this case.
This was a bit of a suck-it-and-see change to quicken the steering up slightly and give a little more ground clearance, with the idea that if it made it less stable, the 170mm units I previously had in it would go back in, as the stability of TB is the one stand-out feature of it that I prefer to No1, and I don't really want to lose that.
And that was pretty much prep complete on both bikes, so they both went in the van along with all the other bits and bobs ( I had a confirmed garage space so the gazebo and gennie etc could stay at home
)and off we headed towards northern Welshland!
It's probably fair to sat that Anglesey is a fair trek for the majority of people- for us it's 260-odd miles and 5ish hours if all goes to plan, which it pretty much did both ways, thankfully.
As I've already alluded to in the post above, the weather was just plain wierd though.
Whilst most of the rest of the country was basking in 25+ degree sunshine that weekend, Anglesey was 10 degrees less, which TBH for me is a nice temperature to race in-warm enough to be nice and grippy, and cool enough so you're not sweating your bollocks off all the time, although I will confess I sweat like a bastid in every race, whatever the weather is doing. But the temp wan't the key thing here, it was the mist/ fog- visibility really was pretty poor both mornings and although suprisingly it didn't delay proceedings at all , it meant a clear visor for a fair bit of the time and that and front of the leathers was wet and salty at times- this was my first view of the sea, looking from the circuit....
Anyway, after a refreshingly painless trip up, we dumped the bikes in the garage, said a few hellos and headed off to Holyhead, approx 10 miles/20 mins away, where we had a room in the Premier Inn for the next three nights.
Friday morning I was up bright and early, raring to get out there, as although the TD I'd done with
@Dodgy69 a couple of months back had given me a taste for it, I fell off halfway through the day and in reality still was nowhere near really knowing my way around.
I needn't have worried though, although the track was damp here and there for the first couple of sessions, thw wind coming in off the sea was ferocious ( which made it quite tricky at a couple of places on the circuit), but it was dry tyres all day.
The bike (TB) was performing perfectly as I'd hoped it would, so I had no desire to reverse any of the suspension changes I'd made, and as the day wore on I got quicker and by the end of Friday was absoloutely loving both the bike and the circuit
Anglesey Coastal layout really is one of the most fun small circuits I've ever been to and although I knew there were still areas where I was losing time ( mainly as there hadn't been a single time where I'd run off or had any serious oo-err moments) I was happy and ready for qualifying Saturday morning.
At this point the old faithful No1 bike hadn't even turned a wheel, so I didn't know whether the minor fettling I had done had made any difference, and TBH, at that stage didn't really have any plan to find out unless I needed wets, as that's what it was wearing.
Saturday morning came, it had rained overnight so it was a little damp underfoot, and was foggy again , but wasn't raining, and there wasn't any forecast that day.
By the time my qualifying sesh came around (my class, the Lightweight Nakeds were 4th in the running order for this meeting which made a nice change from last or very near to in previous rounds this year) , though, it was completely dry, the fog had pretty much lifted, and although still really pretty windy, with a damp feel in the air, the sun did break through now and again , and qualifying turned out to be a real eye-opener for most of us Bandit riders really.
I had what I considered to be a reasonable session qualifying as 5th LNSB and 1st Vet LNSB (2nd Vet was less than 0.1sec behind me, mind you
) with a 1:21, but the difference to Harley (Prebble) on pole with his 1:16 was a massive 5 seconds!
Having said that , next best was Adrian in 2nd on a 1:19 so Harley really did smoke us all- HTF he gets a shonky old 600 Bandit around there in that time on road tyres really beats me. Well, I guess it does, but it doesn't really- as well as almost certainly having a stack more natural talent for it than I do, he's been racing at National level for 10-20 years , has done the Manx a few times , raced in the Bandit championship for a couple of seasons ( and won it) in it's earlier days a few years back with much bigger and arguabley tougher grids than we currently have, and he also puts new tyres on the Bandit for every race day, so to perhaps state the obvious, he can certainly ride- and he's only 10st or so wringing wet.
But to put all of the above into perspective , he's only a mid-pack-ish National racer, and still usually 2 secs or so off pole in the BMW F900 series;- he finished 11th in the main race at the last Snett round which I think is his best so far this season, they've got Kyle Ryde and Storm with them on the F900s at WSB Donington this weekend, so will be interesting to see how he stacks up against them.
I guess this, if needed, just really heavily illustrates how big spread of abilities/ times is , how slow most of us (certainly me anyway) are in the scheme of things, and just how fast world level is- I of course have always known this, and where I fit in the speed side of things, but this weekend really brought it home to me again.
I'm competitive , but also old enough to know my limitations , so if I think about it too hard it's a bit depressing, but the important thing for me is where I was compared to my championship rivals , and the answer was faster than all of them( just) so that will do
But enough navel-gazing woffle, and back to my races- We still don't have anywhere near full grids for our class, and so for this round we were sharing the grid with the "Golden Era Superbike" class , which is basically ZXR750s, YZF750s and SRAD Gixxers- there are a few quick boys in that class, but overall it was probably not a bad lot to put us with on this circuit.
My qualification had put me 10th overall on the grid heading up the 4th row , I got a decent start and spent the first few laps hanging onto Kieran (young boy), before he managed to gap me which made the rest of my race pretty lonely and uneventful, with me crossing the line in the same position I qualified- 5th Bandit/LNSB, and most importantly for me, 1st Vet with my nearest rival approx 8 secs behind me. I'd also managed to knock best part of a second off my qualification time, so job done.
My second race on Saturday was the "Newcomers" (or Oldcomers, as they are calling it in my case...) , for which I lined up 14th on the grid, it was a slightly shorter race than the LNSB ones, and a decent one for me, I managed to pick a couple off, no really decent scraps but had no dramas at all crossing the line in 12th overall, and 2nd in the Middleweight class, so another pot and I was a happy (old) boy
That was the last race of the day, and an early finish too compared to usual, 30 mins or so ahead of schedule which is almost unheard of and unexpected, especially considering how the weather looked first thing
After a very refreshing and welcome cold beer with some of the boys in one of the motorhomes, Isabella and I set off for Holyhead , and after a quick tour around the town and a brief look at Google reviews for the two possible restaurants, thought , nah, and had a very enjoyable tour around the absoloutely massive Tesco and Morrisons there instead before retiring to the Premier Inn for a very welcome shower followed by a suprisingly tasty pie and chips ( in my case) and a couple of pints in the bar there before bed- a nice end to a good day.
Sunday dawned and while I think most of you were enjoying sun and 30 degrees, this was the view from the hotel window, hmmm....
Although it was a bit better at the circuit- damp, but nowhere near as foggy as it had been at times
The track was fairly wet for warm-up, but at least that meant that No1 bike would get a little test, as that had the wets in it at that time, and quite enlightening it was.
Although it really does feel a bit unstable with the wets in , the motor felt lovely- I'm not sure whether that was due to a bit of moisture in the air, or as a result of anything I'd fettled (no dyno at this meeting so I could only go by seat of my pants), but it made me decide to race it in the next race in place of TB as a proper test, so I whacked dry wheels in it ( so much for getting a "wet" bike to save on wheel changing eh...) and I was all set.
I was 11th on the grid for this one, 5th LNSB with my main Vet rival next to me, one place behind.
I got a reasonable start and it was undoubetly the most enjoyable race of the weekend for me, swapping places with Keiran young-boy multiplr times over the first few laps until I decided to jut hang onto him and do him on the last lap a couple of corners from the end so he wouldn't be able to get me back before the line, and although it ended up having to be a slightly rude one as he really was not giving it up without a fight I did it coming across the line just in front of him, but with a last-lap mis-calculation it meant that he got it from me, so in the results I was classified 10th (5th LNSB) and him 9th (4th LNSB) , but importantly, I was 1st Vet, 7 secs ahead of Lee, my main rival, so job done again, and on the old faithful too, with laptimes within 0.2 sec of my best in Saturday's races, and another inconclusive bike test for me really, but I was happy with that
Although I was within a gnat's, I still hadn't quite got into the 1:19s, which was annoying me as I'm still convinced there is that and more in me, and I decided TB was my best chance of acheiving it so I swapped the wheel between the two bikes (again) , and put the clear visor back on as the mist was coming in again, and off we went for my last race of the weekend.
I got a really reasonable start, and once I'd got a couple of laps in and pulled a bit of gap, for most of the race it was a lonely one, with young-boy a good bit behind me, along with Lee, my main championship rival, or at least I thought they were, but I had no pitboard and wasn't really looking behind, I'd got a little complacent, and as I came out of the banked loop on the last lap I saw Lee was right on my arse trying to poke his front wheel in where I definitely didn't want it !
I rode absoloutely chin on the tank and back wheel in the air braking for that last lap, and really defensively at the two main lunge areas as I was convinced he may still be there , and I knew if he was, he would just let the brakes off and barge his way through (as generally that's how you have to ride in Bandit races
) , so the last lap was a good one for me.
What I didn't know until afterwards was that Isabella was on the pit wall and seen it all unfolding , with Lee's son and mates next to her screaming at me and cheering him on the whole way, and at that point, neother she (nor I) knew who they were until she heard the big tall one screaming " come on Dad", and I crossed the line just over a second in front of him, finishing 4th LNSB and 1st Vet so maximum LNSB championship points for me over the weekend and a nicely engraved beer tankard too- Yay!
( still didn't quite get that 1:19 though!
)
And that was it- overall, a pretty much perfect weekend's racing for me, and what made it even better was due to no real stoppages for a change, and where my class was in the running order it was only approx 14:30 when I finished my last race and we were done, which was very welcome when you have a long drive home.
I'd packed No1 bike ad as much other stuff as I could at lunchtime, so we were on the road heading home by 3 and back just after 8 in plenty of time to enjoy a delicious Mirsch Tawa Chicken at home from our local Indian, washed down with a few cold Staropramens after a nice shower- a very nice end to a really fun weekend
So, that's Anglesey done, I've come away with maximum championship points, and FWIW have got a very heathly lead heading into the next round at Brands next weekend (19-20 July).
I like Brands as a circuit, I went quite well there last year, the weather is looking good , there's a NSB gang BBQ/ drinkies sesh scheduled in the paddock Saturday eve, both my brothers and one of my boys is coming, and as it is Brands, we're staying at the hotel on-site so am really looking forward to this one too!
- This was the view at the circuit approx 8am on Saturday
