NBT- I'm going racing 😳

[Dodgy69]

Great write up again Rich, shame you didn't spoil Izzy with the wonderful delights of the star rated Holland Arms.

[crust]

Excellent write up, mate.

Fun times.

[Buckaroo]

Cheers @Tricky . Just love reading your race write up. Brilliant results. Well done mate. Top bombing.

[weeksy]

Top write up as always. I really need to improve the quality of mine and boys. Something for this weekend I think

[Noggin]

Top write up as always. I really need to improve the quality of mine and boys. Something for this weekend I think

It's only different styles. I get as much from your write ups as I do from Tricky's. Not better or worse, just different - but all the info is there and a lot of the emotion too. Don't knock yourself and don't stress about it !!

[Tricky]

Top write up as always. I really need to improve the quality of mine and boys. Something for this weekend I think

It's only different styles. I get as much from your write ups as I do from Tricky's. Not better or worse, just different - but all the info is there and a lot of the emotion too. Don't knock yourself and don't stress about it !!

Absoloutely - no changes needed IMO either (and I reckon you have a lot less spelling/ gramatical errors in yours @weeksy - I've just re-read my Anglesey one and it's ... )

[Tricky]

It was the Brands round this weekend just gone , and although it was unfortunately (and initially surprisingly to me), another meeting where entries were down, and the weather was pretty horrible at times, dull it certainly wasn't, there was some cracking racing

It is,I guess, also the nearest I get to a local round with it only being approx 80 miles away from home for me, and as most of my immediate family is also scattered about in the southern half of England , as well as having my two brothers along for both Saturday and Sunday race days, which I always love when they do come, my middle son with his OH and three or four friends also made the relatively short trip up from Brighton to cheer me on on Sunday which was so nice.
I'd also treated myself to an Insta360 camera a couple of weeks ago, so I had rigged up a mount for the bikes, and this was to be its first-ever outing, so an extra potential bit of interest there too, but more of that later.

So, as is always the way for me and Isabella, we packed the van and set off Thursday afternoon for the relatively short trip around the M25 and checked into the on-site Brands Hatch Mercure Hotel , which I have to say, compared to the Thetford Travelodge and a good few of the Premier Inns we've stayed in recently was an absoloute bargain at a total of £241 for 3 nights for our "Superior" double room - cool eh!



After getting settled in, I then trundled down to the paddock to catch up with people and when the No Limits TD evening was finished, I unloaded the bikes and tools etc into the garage which I was sharing with two other Bandit riders, and I was all set for practice on Friday



Practice day came and went without event, and with no rain, albeit it was very humid. Hence, it was very much a hot and sweaty one- even though our races are all pretty short (usually 15ish minutes duration), I always seem to sweat like an absoloute bastid , and thinking ahead for this round, mainly due to the certainty of rain, I'd remembered to bring my helmet drier for the first time ever- it's actually a £25 fan heater from Screwfix or somewhere that I use in the garage sometimes in the winter.

Still, it's perfect for the job and cost at least £100 less than a Capit/purpose-built one


I got both bikes scrutineered, and after a few beers and loads of laughs with some fellow racers and officials who are by now some really good mates, I retired back to the hotel with Isabella for the night.
Saturday morning, I opened the curtains to see that it was positively heaving it down.



Although the wet tyres I have are only 12 months old and haven't seen much action, the edges on the RHS of the rear are a little torn from a damp/drying race last year, and the rain was coming down so hard I reckoned that I needed all the help I could get so I invested in a brand new ( regs specific 165/55 R17 Dunlop KR369 for anyone interested) rear tyre, and slotted it into TB - the new bike.
I decided to do this as until now, I've never tried TB in the wet , it was going well in the dry, and it is just that bit more stable than the old faithful, so to me, at that point, it made sense for it to be the wet bike, this weekend at least.

As at Anglesey, we were again sharing the grid with the "Golden Era Superbike" class , which is PI bikes (except for early RSV1000 millies which are allowed) from the 90s/very early 00s, and mainly consists of ZXR750s and YZF750s and the odd early Blade.
I went out for qualifying in the rain, and it was horrid. I just didn't feel good. The rear was far (far) too hard in every respect, and the whole bike felt pretty unsettled when leaned over as a result.

It was my first really properly wet qualifying to date, and I qualified pretty poorly, almost 4 secs off pole, but taking the positives, I'd survived one trip across the (wet) grass without dropping it, that still put me 10th on the grid, and as there were only two of us veterans here this weekend, it really didn't matter at all in terms of where I'd likely finish, as I am a good bit faster than the only other one , so as long I could stay on in all my races, I was confident of maximum points.
On reflection, I should have just swapped the wheels back into old-faithful, but I set about trying to improve the bike before my first race.
I left the spring and preload as it was, but backed loads of compression and a similar amount of rebound off, which made it feel better bouncing it in the garage, so fingers crossed.

Race 1 came, the weather wasn't nice at all, and the bike still felt pretty horrible. If anything, I felt even more uncomfortable on the bike, having more slides than I should be having on race wets, to make things worse, I also had visor steaming issues from about half-way through despite using a pinlock and a Foggy, and I was gritting my teeth and praying for the end of the race- I crossed the line in 10th, having (just) been lapped by the winner, but I was 1st Vet and just glad that one was finished TBH!

I then had a fairly long wait until my second race, the Newcomers (or of course Oldcomers as we call it in my case ), and although it never completely dried out all day, and there were a fair few offs, the rain did come and go and the weather wasn't as horrible as we thought it was going to be going from first thing, with the sun out for the final few races of the day, so things were looking up.

One quite dramatic incident happened about halfway through the first DesmoDue race, when one of the bikes caught on fire as he was hammering down the start-finish straight- he (Andrew Lowe) jumped off as soon as he safely could, at the end of the straight just before paddock, and within seconds it went up like a someone had thrown a petrol bomb at it




( I didn't take these pics BTW, I've just nicked them off the group site where they were posted by NG, although I was in the pit lane watching the race, so saw it happen)

We're not sure exactly what caused it as so much of it was burnt, but it seems most likely that a fuel line split or came detached. Thankfully, he was completely unscathed, albeit his bike is going to need a fair bit of T-cut!



My second, and the final, race of the day came. The sun was out and save for some patches here and there, the track was pretty much completely dry so I put dry wheels back in TB , suspension settings back to where they were and off I went.
FWIW, before Brands I was sitting 2nd in this championship and unless Liam Wood (the guy who won it last year and it leading this year ) stops racing there is no way I'd ever get any higher, not that it's that important to me TBH, as it still feels sort of wrong to me that I (and Liam, and a good number of the others) are allowed to compete in this for more than one season.
Anyway, the rider who was sitting 3rd in the championship and reasonably close behind me (he's beaten me and I've beaten him before, although if I'm honest he out-qualifies me nearly everywhere on his MiniTwin) wasn't at Brands, so the only person I had to worry about was Charlie Eagling, who was then 4th in the championship and alongside me on the grid- I was 14th, he was 15th.

I got a good start, put my head down, and despite it being a fairly lonely race for me was a very enjoyable one and went really quickly.
I crossed the line 12th overall, two places ahead of where I'd started, 2nd Middleweight, and 8 secs ahead of Charlie, so job done, and a nice way to end the day's racing, especially considering how it was earlier in the day
After a nice hot shower, we (Isabella, my two brothers, and I) jumped in a cab and went for the now almost compulsory mid-race-weekend curry and pints at the Rajdani just down the road from the circuit, and very nice it was too.

Sunday morning arrived and it was of course wet again, but I'd been doing a fair bit of thinking overnight, and decided to take more than one person's advice ( including @Nobby on here I think), and that I really need to stop changing between bikes and concentrate on one being the wet and one dry, and so I had decided that old faithful was the bike that I will now always be riding in the wet.

And so that's what I did. We had a stoppage a few laps in as a result of a nasty highside and broken leg for a YZF750 rider, but once we got going again I had a half-decent and very enjoyable wet race with no big scares or visor problems, knocking 2 seconds off my previous wet laptimes, crossing the line much happier, 5th LNSB and (of course ) 1st Vet- happy with that all considered.

The weather also perked up considerably, so that by the time my final race came around, the sun was properly out, and even though they declared it a wet race, the track was 90% dry, so yay!

And off I went on TB, with the camera on for this one



I got a reasonable start, ( as you'll see in a vid below), had some good little tussles for the first few laps then a fairly lonely last few laps, but overall a very enjotyable race, crossing the line 4th LNSB and of course 1st Vet- the only other Vet there had got sick of the wet and gone home early
So maximum LNSB championship points for me this weekend again, and I now have a big enough lead that even though there are still three rounds to go ( Donington, Oulton and Combe), my lead is such that no one can catch me, even if I don't score another point this season



Yay, great, you might say, but TBH it feels a bit flat and although it's nice as a winner means that I don't have to pay for a ticket for the end-of-season awards presentation dinner/ piss-up, it feels largely meaningless.
Yes, I am proud that I can say I haven't had a single DNF since I started at the beginning of last year, and I've also had a huge amount of fun and enjoyment, and will continue to, but there is no doubt in my mind that if my main competitors this season had done every round and finished every race (none of them have) as I have done, it would have been a lot closer, and meant very much more to me.

Anyway, whatever, it's by the by really, I've been loving my racing, and I know for a fact that the next few rounds are going to have considerably fuller grids, and that my nearest two or three vet competitors are planning to do them all, so it will be a nice way to finish the season.

Isabella and I are off to Chamonix at the end of this week for a week, driving down there, which should be fun.
Then it's the Donington round two weeks after that ( 16-17 Aug), which is always a busy one, and one I'm really looking forward to.

Oh and the Insta360 camera - as I mentioned earlier, I bought one a week or two back and got to try it out at Brands- I'm still getting my head around the App ( as you'll probably notice ) - file size and image quality has been greatly reduced as I Whatsapped it to myself to load to Youtube, and haven't worked out how to save it in landscape yet, so it's probably a bit annoying if you're not viewing them on a phone/tablet, but when not compressed to a fraction of it's original size, the image quality is simply stunning, it is just a brilliant thing IMO, and hopefully these vids are still of some interest

This is from my last race on Sunday.



And for a bit of perspective on how changeable the weather was, this is the app's AI editor auto-generated scene summary from one of the wet races - fun eh!



It's such a clever device- witchcraft I tell ya!
I'm taking it to France too, so my expertise with the editor and video quality will hopefully improve, and I'll have some better vids for the next few rounds

[Buckaroo]

It was the Brands round this weekend just gone , and although it was unfortunately (and initially surprisingly to me), another meeting where entries were down, and the weather was pretty horrible at times, dull it certainly wasn't, there was some cracking racing

It is,I guess, also the nearest I get to a local round with it only being approx 80 miles away from home for me, and as most of my immediate family is also scattered about in the southern half of England , as well as having my two brothers along for both Saturday and Sunday race days, which I always love when they do come, my middle son with his OH and three or four friends also made the relatively short trip up from Brighton to cheer me on on Sunday which was so nice.
I'd also treated myself to an Insta360 camera a couple of weeks ago, so I had rigged up a mount for the bikes, and this was to be its first-ever outing, so an extra potential bit of interest there too, but more of that later.

So, as is always the way for me and Isabella, we packed the van and set off Thursday afternoon for the relatively short trip around the M25 and checked into the on-site Brands Hatch Mercure Hotel , which I have to say, compared to the Thetford Travelodge and a good few of the Premier Inns we've stayed in recently was an absoloute bargain at a total of £241 for 3 nights for our "Superior" double room - cool eh!



After getting settled in, I then trundled down to the paddock to catch up with people and when the No Limits TD evening was finished, I unloaded the bikes and tools etc into the garage which I was sharing with two other Bandit riders, and I was all set for practice on Friday



Practice day came and went without event, and with no rain, albeit it was very humid. Hence, it was very much a hot and sweaty one- even though our races are all pretty short (usually 15ish minutes duration), I always seem to sweat like an absoloute bastid , and thinking ahead for this round, mainly due to the certainty of rain, I'd remembered to bring my helmet drier for the first time ever- it's actually a £25 fan heater from Screwfix or somewhere that I use in the garage sometimes in the winter.

Still, it's perfect for the job and cost at least £100 less than a Capit/purpose-built one


I got both bikes scrutineered, and after a few beers and loads of laughs with some fellow racers and officials who are by now some really good mates, I retired back to the hotel with Isabella for the night.
Saturday morning, I opened the curtains to see that it was positively heaving it down.



Although the wet tyres I have are only 12 months old and haven't seen much action, the edges on the RHS of the rear are a little torn from a damp/drying race last year, and the rain was coming down so hard I reckoned that I needed all the help I could get so I invested in a brand new ( regs specific 165/55 R17 Dunlop KR369 for anyone interested) rear tyre, and slotted it into TB - the new bike.
I decided to do this as until now, I've never tried TB in the wet , it was going well in the dry, and it is just that bit more stable than the old faithful, so to me, at that point, it made sense for it to be the wet bike, this weekend at least.

As at Anglesey, we were again sharing the grid with the "Golden Era Superbike" class , which is PI bikes (except for early RSV1000 millies which are allowed) from the 90s/very early 00s, and mainly consists of ZXR750s and YZF750s and the odd early Blade.
I went out for qualifying in the rain, and it was horrid. I just didn't feel good. The rear was far (far) too hard in every respect, and the whole bike felt pretty unsettled when leaned over as a result.

It was my first really properly wet qualifying to date, and I qualified pretty poorly, almost 4 secs off pole, but taking the positives, I'd survived one trip across the (wet) grass without dropping it, that still put me 10th on the grid, and as there were only two of us veterans here this weekend, it really didn't matter at all in terms of where I'd likely finish, as I am a good bit faster than the only other one , so as long I could stay on in all my races, I was confident of maximum points.
On reflection, I should have just swapped the wheels back into old-faithful, but I set about trying to improve the bike before my first race.
I left the spring and preload as it was, but backed loads of compression and a similar amount of rebound off, which made it feel better bouncing it in the garage, so fingers crossed.

Race 1 came, the weather wasn't nice at all, and the bike still felt pretty horrible. If anything, I felt even more uncomfortable on the bike, having more slides than I should be having on race wets, to make things worse, I also had visor steaming issues from about half-way through despite using a pinlock and a Foggy, and I was gritting my teeth and praying for the end of the race- I crossed the line in 10th, having (just) been lapped by the winner, but I was 1st Vet and just glad that one was finished TBH!

I then had a fairly long wait until my second race, the Newcomers (or of course Oldcomers as we call it in my case ), and although it never completely dried out all day, and there were a fair few offs, the rain did come and go and the weather wasn't as horrible as we thought it was going to be going from first thing, with the sun out for the final few races of the day, so things were looking up.

One quite dramatic incident happened about halfway through the first DesmoDue race, when one of the bikes caught on fire as he was hammering down the start-finish straight- he (Andrew Lowe) jumped off as soon as he safely could, at the end of the straight just before paddock, and within seconds it went up like a someone had thrown a petrol bomb at it




( I didn't take these pics BTW, I've just nicked them off the group site where they were posted by NG, although I was in the pit lane watching the race, so saw it happen)

We're not sure exactly what caused it as so much of it was burnt, but it seems most likely that a fuel line split or came detached. Thankfully, he was completely unscathed, albeit his bike is going to need a fair bit of T-cut!



My second, and the final, race of the day came. The sun was out and save for some patches here and there, the track was pretty much completely dry so I put dry wheels back in TB , suspension settings back to where they were and off I went.
FWIW, before Brands I was sitting 2nd in this championship and unless Liam Wood (the guy who won it last year and it leading this year ) stops racing there is no way I'd ever get any higher, not that it's that important to me TBH, as it still feels sort of wrong to me that I (and Liam, and a good number of the others) are allowed to compete in this for more than one season.
Anyway, the rider who was sitting 3rd in the championship and reasonably close behind me (he's beaten me and I've beaten him before, although if I'm honest he out-qualifies me nearly everywhere on his MiniTwin) wasn't at Brands, so the only person I had to worry about was Charlie Eagling, who was then 4th in the championship and alongside me on the grid- I was 14th, he was 15th.

I got a good start, put my head down, and despite it being a fairly lonely race for me was a very enjoyable one and went really quickly.
I crossed the line 12th overall, two places ahead of where I'd started, 2nd Middleweight, and 8 secs ahead of Charlie, so job done, and a nice way to end the day's racing, especially considering how it was earlier in the day
After a nice hot shower, we (Isabella, my two brothers, and I) jumped in a cab and went for the now almost compulsory mid-race-weekend curry and pints at the Rajdani just down the road from the circuit, and very nice it was too.

Sunday morning arrived and it was of course wet again, but I'd been doing a fair bit of thinking overnight, and decided to take more than one person's advice ( including @Nobby on here I think), and that I really need to stop changing between bikes and concentrate on one being the wet and one dry, and so I had decided that old faithful was the bike that I will now always be riding in the wet.

And so that's what I did. We had a stoppage a few laps in as a result of a nasty highside and broken leg for a YZF750 rider, but once we got going again I had a half-decent and very enjoyable wet race with no big scares or visor problems, knocking 2 seconds off my previous wet laptimes, crossing the line much happier, 5th LNSB and (of course ) 1st Vet- happy with that all considered.

The weather also perked up considerably, so that by the time my final race came around, the sun was properly out, and even though they declared it a wet race, the track was 90% dry, so yay!

And off I went on TB, with the camera on for this one



I got a reasonable start, ( as you'll see in a vid below), had some good little tussles for the first few laps then a fairly lonely last few laps, but overall a very enjotyable race, crossing the line 4th LNSB and of course 1st Vet- the only other Vet there had got sick of the wet and gone home early
So maximum LNSB championship points for me this weekend again, and I now have a big enough lead that even though there are still three rounds to go ( Donington, Oulton and Combe), my lead is such that no one can catch me, even if I don't score another point this season



Yay, great, you might say, but TBH it feels a bit flat and although it's nice as a winner means that I don't have to pay for a ticket for the end-of-season awards presentation dinner/ piss-up, it feels largely meaningless.
Yes, I am proud that I can say I haven't had a single DNF since I started at the beginning of last year, and I've also had a huge amount of fun and enjoyment, and will continue to, but there is no doubt in my mind that if my main competitors this season had done every round and finished every race (none of them have) as I have done, it would have been a lot closer, and meant very much more to me.

Anyway, whatever, it's by the by really, I've been loving my racing, and I know for a fact that the next few rounds are going to have considerably fuller grids, and that my nearest two or three vet competitors are planning to do them all, so it will be a nice way to finish the season.

Isabella and I are off to Chamonix at the end of this week for a week, driving down there, which should be fun.
Then it's the Donington round two weeks after that ( 16-17 Aug), which is always a busy one, and one I'm really looking forward to.

Oh and the Insta360 camera - as I mentioned earlier, I bought one a week or two back and got to try it out at Brands- I'm still getting my head around the App ( as you'll probably notice ) - file size and image quality has been greatly reduced as I Whatsapped it to myself to load to Youtube, and haven't worked out how to save it in landscape yet, so it's probably a bit annoying if you're not viewing them on a phone/tablet, but when not compressed to a fraction of it's original size, the image quality is simply stunning, it is just a brilliant thing IMO, and hopefully these vids are still of some interest

This is from my last race on Sunday.



And for a bit of perspective on how changeable the weather was, this is the app's AI editor auto-generated scene summary from one of the wet races - fun eh!



It's such a clever device- witchcraft I tell ya!
I'm taking it to France too, so my expertise with the editor and video quality will hopefully improve, and I'll have some better vids for the next few rounds

Better man than I am Gunga Din. The new video thingy is amazing

[Dodgy69]

Great to see you having proper fun time Rich. Q...what makes the camera turn around??

[Tricky]

Great to see you having proper fun time Rich. Q...what makes the camera turn around??

The camera says still, it records all 360 degrees, and when you play it back/edit, you decide what view you want and just turn your phone/tablet around (either by physically turning it or with you finger on the screen) to see the view you want, it really is dead clever

[Tricky]

We were at Donington last weekend for rounds 17-19 ( of 24) of the championship, another circuit that I like, especially since they re-surfaced it a year or so ago- I haven't been there since last season, just after it had been done, but it really was billiard-table smooth then, quite exceptional and so I was hoping it hadn't changed.

We race the National circuit layout which misses out the Melbourne Loop, and although shorter ( vs for the GP layout) I personally prefer it, it gets rid of that nasty Goddards last corner, and makes for a lot of last-lap action at the "Roberts" chicane, the final corner of every race.

As usual, I'd booked the Friday test day too, and have a garage space, so off we went Thursday afternoon, set up in the garage early evening and retired to the Holiday Inn Express .
Had a nice relatively empty garage this weekend, sharing with one other Bandit racer, Jimmy on his V2 and a Joel, a young Welsh bloke on an SV, a really nice bloke but, well, if talking was an Olympic sport, he'd definitely be in the national team!





The weather was predicted to be dry all weekend, and indeed it was, so I'd only unloaded one bike, (TB ) with the plan to focus all my efforts on that now as my No1 and "dry" bike rather than chopping and changing between the two. And that's what I ended up doing, albeit at one point on Friday I was on the verge of dragging the old faithful out of the van.

Although Friday started off well, in brilliant sunshine with the bike feeling good, that only lasted a few laps, when it started dying when coming back on the throttle out of corners, and dropping a cylinder or two at high revs too.
Having experienced other people having those sort of problems and knowing first-hand how potentially dangerous that can be , I immediately pulled in and set about tying to diagnose the problem.
It definitely had the symptoms of a fuel related problem ( 90% of the time, running problems are that rather than ignition on non-FI bikes IME...) , and the first thing that I did was to check the temperature of all the exhaust headers as soon as I got it on the stands to see whether it was one or more cylinders that I was losing.

No1 was perhaps 10 degrees or so cooler than the rest, but nothing conclusive there, and although it had been running absoloutely fine at Brands a few weeks ago, I wondered whether I had some water or other shite in one or more of the float bowls ( as there was a fair bit of rain over the weekend!) so I drained them one by one, both to check for water/shite, and that each float bowl had the same amount of fuel in it. That all looked OK, and the fuel filter looked clean , so I checked that the tank breather was clear, all good there, so off I went out again. It was tip-top for a lap or so then, bosh, same symtoms, so in I came again, and off came the carbs, deep joy....
I pulled all the float bowls, removed the pilot jets and main jets/emulsion tubes, popped next door into DanCooper's garage to borrow his airline and blew out every jet and passage in each of the carbs.

I also checked the lifting of the slides with the airline, and that there was nothing in the back of the airbox, everything was good, so back it all went together , and off I went again. Unfortunatley no change, so again, I was in on the 2nd lap.
This was now getting annoying, and although I was on the verge of thinking it must be a heat related electrical problem, it just smacked of fuel starvation to me , so before launching in to pulling plugs and swapping coils, CDI unit etc, I removed the fuel pipe from the carb-side end of the quick-break fuel connector- this thing.



I turned on the fuel tap and we had a relatively pathetic flow rate of probably a quarter of what it was straight out of the tap.- now we are getting somewhere!
I removed it completely and blew it all through with an airline, but it didn't make any noticable difference, so I just replaced it with a slightly longer piece of pipe directly from the tap to the filter, and whacked the tank back on.
Out for the next session, and normal service was resumed, yay!
I'd lost pretty much all of the morning on this, but TBH it didn't really matter, the bike was running great, track surface was still billiard-table smooth and the rest of the day was without hitch. Although I still don't have a lap-timer so didn't have a clue how well or otherwise I was going, I like Donington and felt good, so stayed out for the rest of the day before getting the bike scrutineered and retiring to the Holiday Inn for a couple of beers, some pasta, and bed.

I am very pleased to report that this meeting was very much busier than the last two or three have been, with pretty much full grids of 30-40 riders in all the races, and once again we we sharing the grid with the " Golden ERA Superbike" lot- basically mainly ZX7Rs and YZF750s, with a couple of (carbed) GSXR750s, one early FireBlade and Howard Selby (who I'm guessing some of the people on here of my age will remember - knocking on in age but still very fast) on his rocketship of a GSXR7/11
Another pleasing aspect of this meeting was that once again, we were first race on the programme, so of course also first out in qualifying.
I felt comfotable in that, and qualified in what I thought was a respectable 7th overall and 1st Vet with a 1:22.0- Harley (Prebble) was ( once again ) a country mile in front of the rest of the gang on pole with a 1:18.5 and new Bandit lap record, but 2nd was 1:20.5 so ( Harley aside), I didn't feel like I was miles away, and I guess crucially in terms of championship points (not that it matters any longer for me this season) and trophies, I was 1.3 secs quicker than the next Vet.



Anyway, my qualifying put me back in P16 on the combined grid, as not surprisingly on a circuit as quick as Donington the first few rows were dominated by the Golden Superbikes, but there were a good number behind me too and I was feeling good for the race and up for it.
And I had a half-decent race- didn't get the best of starts, but crossed the line 12th, 4 places ahead of where I'd started which was 5th LNSB, (losing out on 4th by 0.1 sec ), and 1st Vet, so another win, and I got officially announced as 2025 Veteran champion with 7 races still to go, so job done.
I had the 360 camera on - it's not the most exciting race to watch , but I had a good few little tussles and a bit of last lap chicane action( and it's still more exciting than most MotoGP races IMO )



My second race on Saturday was the Newcomers, which I still feel a bit of a fraud riding in, but as I've probably said before, getting on for half the grid were also racing in it last year.
It , in common with most of the Newcomers races, was a bit manic with a fairly large spread of abilities and levels of do-or-die ness with people absoloutely all over the place at times, but I stayed out of trouble and came home as 3rd in class (Middlewight), with Liam Wood (suprise suprise...) and one other SV in front of me.

Both my brothers had come to cheer me on again and were also booked into the Holiday Inn with us, so it was a very pleasant evening was had with the usual default curry at the Orissa, which is the nicer of the Castle Donington Indian's IMO, and definitely recommended

Sunday morning came, and after a short and very hectic warm-up practice with what must have been 50 other bikes, I was lining up on the grid in 17th , which I still don't understand, considering my race1 performance ( I thought I should have been 12th), but no matter, I'm generally speaking not bad off the line and it gives me more to aim at.
This was a bit of a manic race, I was pushed wide at Redgate on the first lap, had a couple of people go down in front of me in the first couple of laps, and of course sod's law dictated that this was the only race that the camera failed to record, shame, as it would have been a good watch.
Anyway, I managed to pull things back a bit, but got mugged at the chicane on the last lap losing me two places meaning that I crossed the line 17th (basically where I started), which was 7th LNSB and 1st Vet again , so by no means a disaster, and another fun, if slightly disappointing in terms of the result, race.



For the final race of the day I lined up 17th again, a much better first lap in this one and a pretty much race long too-ing and fro-ing with last year's winner of the Bandit series ( who to date, this season has been back on a TZ), on his freshly built CB500- if you haven't seen how quick they can be with a good rider aboard, don't laugh or discount them- although they are giving away 20 or so HP to a decent Bandit, they're a good 40kg lighter and a well ridden one goes very well.

He got by me a couple of laps from the end and managed to pull a bit of a gap, but on the last lap I really got my head down , and by Mcleans I was back up to him, and I comfortably went past him halfway down the back straight, well before either of u even touched the brakes. Knowing how good on the brakes he is, I stayed right and took a very defensive line into the last chicane meaning that I ended up using a good bit of the paint of the LHS on the way out which in turn pushed me a bit wide, but I kept it pinned and crossed the line in front of him, 12th overall, 6th LNSB and 1st Vet again.
It had been a very enjoyable race for me, I was buzzing and as we went in I followed him back to his pit for a bit of a chinwag and to ask him if he would show me around Oulton ( it's the next round, was was first race last year, I never felt comfortable there, was slow, and he won every race...) only to be greeted by the most agressive foul-mouthed tirade from him telling me that I'd nearly taken him out at the last chicane, pushed him onto the grass and how shit a rider I am.

He's a very experienced and very accomplished National level racer who's been at it 30 years or more that I've looked up to , and up until that point, we've always had loads of laughs and (I thought) that we'd always thought got on great- he even complemented me on more than one occasion last season and after race one this weekend.
I rode off without any comment, shocked and a fair bit deflated TBH as it really was completely unexpected, and decided that before I said anything to him or anyone else, I'd check the video ( assuming that the camera had worked this time), and if it was as he was saying, put my hands up and try and make peace next time we meet.

So we packed up and headed home, and as soon as I got there, I downloaded the video.
Now, at the time of writing this, I haven't had any contact from or with him since his outburst, and so won't be putting it up anywhere public until he's seen it ( and only then if he wants me to ), but the really great thing about these Insta360 cameras is you can just turn around and see what's happening all around you, so we get a good view of the whole event .

Yup, my defensive line meant I had a slower exit speed than normal which allowed him to pull a bit back , he straight-lined it and obviously had the plan to ride around the outside of me on the exit, but my line blocked him off and meant that wasn't possible. He got nowhere near being level with me or in my peripheral vision, and he didn't even get onto the paint let alone onto the grass, but had to back off as there was no way past unless he took to the rumble strip or grass.

Adrenaline is sky-high at the end of the race, and even though in the scheme of things it's only a pissy-arsed low-level club race, for pretty much all of us out there it's a big deal- we all want to win so I think his reaction will have been driven by the immediate moment and losing that place, and I'm hoping that he got things into perspective and we'll be mates again by the time the next races come around in three weeks time.

If it's still ermm, frosty, I'll offer to show him the vid which will hopefully sort things, and if that doesn't, well fuck him, he's not the man I thought he was which would be a shame, but it won't affect my enjoyment of future races.

On a more positive note, I officially got confirmed as Vets champ for this season on Saturday
And despite matey's outburst, it was another great weekend, with stacks of excitement, no DNFs for me and loads of laughs with people I love



The next round is at Oulton on Sept 13th- as seems to be the way most of the time there, it's the only single day meeting of the season with test/practice on Friday, and racing Saturday only so only two races each. It was my first ever meeting there last season, TBH it was a bit of a baptism of fire, not a great one for me and I don't feel that I have the place anywhere near sussed yet, but I'm hoping I can change that this year- it's also the only MSV circuit that I haven't had a winner's cap from yet, so I'm looking to change that and complete my set- Oulton here I come!

[Buckaroo]

What a weekend!
Great write up, as usual. You may have sewn up the cup for the year, but you had to win it in the first place.
Miserable matey boy was almost certainly pumped up after the racing, I'm sure he'll reflect and have a chump moment when he calms down.

Well done!!

[Sunny]

Fab write up, and congrats on winning half-way through, that's excellent going

Fingers crossed an apology is heading your way next round!

[Dodgy69]

Superb footage @Tricky . Top man.

[Supermofo]

Congrats on the Championship, you've wrapped it up before Marc

Totally get the confrontation putting you out but adrenaline fueled sports are gonna boil over for some people at times. Think you have a good perspective on it, it'll either be water under the bridge (hopefully) or not worth pursuing and walk away.

[Tricky]

This week-end just gone was the penultimate rounds of the championship at Oulton Park.

As I previously mentioned, the Oulton meeting is different to all of the other rounds in that it is just a single day (Saturday) racing, but with the usual optional test/practice day on the Friday.
This time I was in a garage, which was a good start particularly looking at the weather forecast, and of course means not having to fanny about with gazebos and generators.
So we did the usual and rolled up early evening Thursday, de-canted the contents of the van into garage No3 which we were sharing with one other Bandit racer, two RS660 Supertwins boys and a 50ish YO Norn Iron novice on a spankers £24k Fireblade SP (he'd sensibly, as it turns out, also purchased a brand new set of OE wheels with discs etc along with the bike )



And we trundled off to the Sandiway Premier Inn, which, for anyone that's interested, although it has the usual comfy bed, the rest of it is very old fashioned and tired, definitely due a re-fit I'd say, but cheap and absoloutely fine for our purpose.

Friday arrived, a bit cold but nice and dry with no rain now forecast for during the day, which made me happy as I wasn't confident here last year, really felt that I still didn't know the place and so had a fair bit of work to do to get myself up to a decent place , and you really need a dry track for that, IMO, anyway.



And the first session proved me right- I really hadn't remembered much of it at all- a fair bit of Oulton is blind and/or off camber, so you do need to know where you are going here before really pushing, but I managed to tag onto one or two of the faster more experienced guys towards the end of the session, and started to piece it all together so by the end of the day, although I still have work to do and time to gain in a couple of areas (most notably Druids, and I think to a slightly lesser extent Old Hall and Knickerbrook, I was feeling good and really loving the circuit for the first time ever.
Isabella hadn't come to the track at all on Friday, simply as we were booked into " The Rookery" Hotel & Spa, a really beautiful old place for Friday and Saturday nights, so she'd gone straight from the Premier Inn to the Rookery and was taking advantage of the spa and having a massage etc while I was learning the circuit.

And I'm jumping ahead a bit here, but whilst I mention it, it was a great choice. It's such a lovely and well-appointed place, and this might sound a bit corny, but the bit that really made it stand out for me was the staff;- every single one of them that we came into contact with were simply exceptional- people who use their brains and were really attentive and accommodating, but not OTT or in your face . We were staying in the oldpart of the place and it had a very comfortable bar and great bar food ( there's also a 3 Rosette restaurant there, but the menu looked pretty poncy, and that's really not our sort of thing) and they didn't even turn their noses up at me arriving straight from the track in the van, sweaty and a bit grubby in scruffy gear





Our stay put a really different dimension on a race weekend for us , where a Premier Inn or Travelodge is our usual abode - it was so lovely to know that after what are typically long and quite physically (for me) and mentally demanding days for both of us , we were going back to unwind and relax at Rookery Hall for a night when the racing was finished rather than heading straight back down the M6, it really was just perfect- definitely recommended if you can, and want to splash the cash occasionally

Anyway, back to the racing

It absoloutely hoofed it down throughout the night and was still raining a bit when I got to the track at 7am- as it's just a single day racing, and they need to fit two races per class and qualifying in to one day, it starts a bit earlier than usual with the first on the programme qualifying session starting at 08:30, and yep, you guessed it, we were firsr on the programme again.



Looking on the positive side, there was no question as to whether to go out on wets or drys, it was full wets, so for me that simply meant jumping on the old faithful bike, and it had stopped raining.
The last time I rode it with wets on was at Anglesey, and as I think I mentioned then, it was extrememly twitchy to the point of feeling unstable at times- not pleasant to ride.
It's a combination of the high rear ride height, high seat and the profile of the Dunlop wets I think, it is absoloutely fine with drys on it, and although I had softened everything off as much as possible in an attempt to bring the rear-end down , I didn't have suitable dog-bones to bring it to where I think it needs to be, and hadn't ridden it again in the wet since then so I was hoping it had improved things sufficiently to allow me to set a half decent time, but no, although the motor and brakes felt great, it was hideous , especially down through Cascades and Island and up Clay Hill, which also happen to be some of the fastest bit of the track, so I really was just gritting my teeth , trying not to crash and praying for the end of the session.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, my times were pretty shit, in the 2:16s, some 6-7 seconds off pole (that Prebble bloke again... ) which put me 9th LNSB, and 15th overall on the grid which we were again sharing with the "Golden Era Superbike" lot.
The good news was that some sun was breaking through the heavy cloud now and again, , and although there were showers on and off throughout the day, one or two of them absoloutely torrential, when we lined up on the grid for race1, it was all but dry, so I was on TB, and happy.

I got a good start, and had a very enjoyable race, battling with most of the usual suspects, and ending up 2nd Vet, which was 7th LNSB and 13th overall, and lapping in the 1:59s so I was well happy with that.

RACE1



The person ( #22, Dave Mackay ) that you see me battling with a bit and fist-pumping at the end of the video after we've crossed the finish line was a new entrant to our class for this weekend, albeit he's definitely not new to racing, and there is what I think is an interesting, and lovely, if a bit sad story to the bike he was on.
Dave is this year's NG Open Class champion ( he wrapped it up this weekend ), and is also one of the key riders and stalwarts in the Help for Heroes racing team.
The Bandit that he was on is owned by a recently wheelchair-bound veteran who has a degenerative wasting disease- he started to build it at the end of last year with the aim of racing it while he still was physically able, but apparantley his condition has very severely worsened over the last few months, and by the sound of things, he likely doesn't have very long left on this earth , so Dave finished the build and got it running for this weekend , with the aim of winning a trophy on it for it's owner, which I thought was pretty cool.
Whether we'll see him back out on it again is currently not certain, but he loved it (apart from the shit forks and Dunlop road tyres ) and it would be great to have him in the series next year.

As for my second race, it was another very enjoyable one, if a bit frustrating.

RACE 2



As you'll see if you watch the vid, I got my now customary good start, and was hanging with the front group of 4 until three-quarters around lap 2 when Zak, one of the riders in front of me, mistook a "reduced adhesion" red and orange light that they switched on between Druids and Lodge for a red light and put his arm up. I'd just caught the light out of the corner of my eye, and with Zak's arm up I rolled off too thinking the race was being stopped, as apparently did one or two others behind me but when Dave steamed past (approx 4:00 mins in to the video above) and the Marshalls weren't waving any flags I clicked, but by then he and the other 4 in front were gone and we (me, Kieran Barker and Zak, who we caught on the last lap) couldn't bridge the gap, but had fun trying, and I had a nearly-off when I locked the front at Hislops on the last lap meaning Zak got back past and I crossed the line 7th LNSB (I like to think I would have been 4th without the red light incident ), but that was 1st Vet, so a first place trophy for me, low 1:58 sec lap times and most importantly a winners baseball cap, which means I've now got the full set, Yay!



It was a great way to finish the day, and even better, we had that extra night in Rookery Hall and weren't driving home until Sunday morning, so we had a leisurely pack of the van and watched most of the rest of the racing cheering mates on before trundling off towards Nantwich to Rookery Hall for a lovely hot shower, a few beers and a very tasty burger in the bar before bed- perfect end to a perfect day.



Next up, and the final rounds of the season, are at Castle Combe on the weekend of 11-12th October, it wasn't a track that I liked or felt comfortable at last year, but hey, I said that about Oulton too until this weekend, so who knows, but whatever happens, I'm pretty sure I'll have fun, and I will be putting proper effort into getting the wet bike handling sorted between now and then, as sods law (and the fact that it will be October ) says that we will almost certainly have rain!

[ChrisW]

Oh god, no - you stayed in Northwich...

Oh yay - you found Rookery Hall!

Well done

[Tricky]

Oh god, no - you stayed in Northwich...

Oh yay - you found Rookery Hall!

Well done

Rookery Hall cost us bugger-all too, apart from bar bills- it was a wedding present gift from some people to us last year.
It would have been a long way for us to come just for a couple of nights away on it's own, but was absoloutely spot on for Oulton

[Omegasteve]

I have just spent the last week reading this from start to finish and I can hand on heart say that you are downright inspiring. I've ridden bikes for the best part of my life and so has my dad whos just turned 64. Neither of us have even done a track day but we've spoke about it for years. Reading this thread has definitely given me the drive to go out and have a go. Great read @Tricky and best of luck in future events!

[Tricky]

I have just spent the last week reading this from start to finish and I can hand on heart say that you are downright inspiring. I've ridden bikes for the best part of my life and so has my dad whos just turned 64. Neither of us have even done a track day but we've spoke about it for years. Reading this thread has definitely given me the drive to go out and have a go. Great read @Tricky and best of luck in future events!

Thanks for the kind words Steve , and I hope you do it- if you do, you'll soon know whether it's for you or not .
It's a shame we don't still have our annual social track day weekend, that would have been ideal for you both, but if you do decide to take the plunge, post up where and when on here- that's not many of us on here these days that still do any, but a few of us do and chances are would join you