Rain rain go away...

Hello again,

Another weekend has come and gone and this one was the weekend of the second round of the King of Ruapuna series down here in Christchurch.  Seeing as it had been a very long time since I'd been on the bike I was pretty much frothing at the mouth to get on the bike and get back on the track.  We were scheduled to head out for a test of Friday as well as the Saturday race day so I was super excited.  However, the weather didn't want to play nice.  After at least 10 days of sunshine it was a shocker on Friday.  Absolutely bucketing down.  So we called it off and I went to work instead.  That was the first big bummer of the weekend...

The forcast for Saturday was rain clearing around midday.  I knew not to trust the weather man so prepared myself for a full wet day.  Arriving at the track I wasn't wrong.  There was some good news however, there were lots of 125s there!  At round one there had been 4 of us.  On Saturday there were 9, it was amazing.  The pit rang with the sound of 2-strokes all day and a blue haze was clearly visable at all times.  Delicious!

Out we all headed to qualify.  On wets as the weather was still pretty bad.  Dry for a while then it would rain hard.  My qualifying session didn't go so well.  According to mylaps I only got in 3 laps, the last of which was timed at a 4 minutes 17... this is around 2 and a half minutes off the lap record and I'm fairly certain I wasn't going that slow!  I'm not entirly sure what happened but it doesn't matter, I was dead last.  I knew I had fairly good race pace in the wet though and was pretty happy with my dry times from past track sessions so I was looking foward to the races.

I'm not sure how it works elsewhere, but Motorcycling Canterbury (my club) run 125s off the front of the F3 race.  Which is quite exciting.  You usually end up catching a few of the slower F3 or Pro-twin guys and a few of the faster guys end up catching you too.  So you get to mix it up a fair bit.

Race 1

I got a terrible start... according to mylaps I was 7th over the timing line the first time so I'd made up very few positions and I only made up 1 position to cross the line in 6th at the end of the first lap.  But I was confident I could move foward and make up lost time.  At the end of the second lap I was in 5th, with a fair gap to the front 4 who had pulled away.  I swear it was at least half the back straight but I could be exaggerating.  Over the next 2 laps I really put my head down and I made up the gap to the front 4 who were still pretty close together.  It didn't take long to get past Cameron Hudson, my teamate in Steve Ward Racing, and I also got past Jake Lewis into the hairpin while around some lapped traffic.  I was beginning to think I might be able to win!  I knew the white flag was coming out next time round so I pushed hard to catch up to the front 2 who had a wee gap and was right on their tail coming out of the dipper when I got a wee bit over zealous with my throttle hand and it spat me off.  A really disappointing end to what could have been a very good race.  My best time was a 1:56.706 which was a second faster than Kyle Hammond who won...  Fortunately for me there wasn't too much damage.  The master cylinder was a bit banged about and needed replacing plus a fairing mount and a footpeg.  Cheers heaps to Steve for doing all that.

I have to say that it wasn't the best day for Steve Ward Racing.  We had carby problems on all 3 of our bikes.  Steve had them all off at some point during the day to clean them out as more often than not our we'd come back into the pits with petrol pouring out the belly pan. Turns out the freshly painted fuel tanks hadn't had the fuel taps taped up and paint was clogging up everything.  Steve did a great job to just get us all out for every race.

So I had scored no points for the King of Ruapuna championship and the weather was still looking like crap.  The weather looked so bad in fact that management decided to run the last 8 lap race (King of Ruapuna races are usually 6 laps with the 3rd and final race being an 8 lap one for a seperate series called King of Canterbury) instead of the second King of Ruapuna race.  I have to admit, I wasn't feeling too good.  I was in a bit of pain and my confidence wasn't that high.

Race 2

Once again I got a terrible start, which is something I really need to work on.  8th over the timing line for the first time and it didn't get that much better for me from there.  It took me 4 laps to get past the slowest of the Moto Academy boys and by that point the race was essentially over for me as there was too big a gap to the front guys.  Plus the bruising I had taken the last race was making it tough to ride.  It also dried out quite considerably.  This would normally be a good thing but I didn't want to hurt the wets I was riding on.  Everyone elses lap times tumbled and I went slower... with a 1:57.602 as my best time in much better conditions.  It really was a shocker of a race for me.  I got back in the pits and told Steve we would be needing slicks if the last race were to go ahead.

Race 3

It was becoming a bit of a joke to me at this point, but I got another terrible start.  Once again 8th over the timing line for the first time.  I really need to work on these starts and a good grid position would probably help that a lot.  I wasn't sticking around like last race though.  Making up 1 position by the end of lap 1 and another 4 postions by the end of the second lap to go 3rd.  This was helped by Kyle Hammond retiring in front of me.  This time though it was too little to late.  Jake Lewis and Gordon Hastings setting a very good pace and I wasn't able to catch them.  My quickest time was a 1:46.747 which is my first real indication of my dry time as the first King of Ruapuna round was wet also and of course it's my first year on a 125.

As you can clearly see, it wasn't the best weekend for me but I'm glad I was able to dig deep and regain some composure to finish on the podium in the last race.  I'm also happy for my teamates.  Cameron Hudson taking a second in the 8 lap King of Canterbury race and Blake Henwood-Sparks getting second in the first race on the line.

As always, a huge thanks to Steve Ward.  He's been a huge help and I wouldn't be able to do any of my racing without him.

The next round of King of Ruapuna is on the 4th of December so you should all come along!  It's some great racing and a good indicator of what the national championships will be like early next year.

Until next time, keep safe everyone.

Welcome to my blog!

Hello and welcome to the first of (hopefully) many updates.

For those who don't know, this will be my racing blog.  Where I keep the whole world up-to-date with all my fantastic racing exploits!  So, let's start at the very beginning then, I hear it's a very good place to start...

I started racing in late 2009 on an RG 150 in a class called streetstocks.  At the time, the class was basically only RG 150's and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  Up until that point I had only ever ridden a Yamaha Scorpio.

Although you may not be able to read this... here it is!  (not my one of course)

http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_Scorpio_Z

So my first foray into racing was a pretty enjoyable one.  I bought a bike and took to it like a duck to water.  All of a sudden I was spending the majority of my money on racing and lived for whenever the next race meeting was.  Here is my precious RG:

Me on my RG

The RG 150 is a single cylinder, 150 cc two-stroke machine, and I loved mine.  I took that thing round the South Island.  From the track outside Christchurch, Ruapuna to Levels Raceway a couple of hours away, even all the way down to Teretonga.  Which was about a 7 hour drive!

On that bike I competed in the NZSBK championships in the streetstock support class.  Which was just for the 3 aforementioned rounds in the South Island.  I took second place overall in my age group (streetstock seniors).  This is not at all impressive, as there were only 12 people classified in that class most of whom didn't even go to all 3 rounds.  Never-the-less, I'm happy with my achievement!  Unfortunately for all involved, my beloved RG passed away not long after the national championships and I had to sell it.  R.I.P good friend, you will be missed.

One of my first ever rides

So the season finished and it looked like my short career had finished with it.  I had no bike, no desire to buy another and was running out of enthusiasm having never had to deal with bike death before.  Luckily for me, I stumbled across Steve Ward Racing.  Which leads me to my current ride, an RS125 GP bike.  I'm hiring one off Steve this season and it has been a fanastic learning experience so far as we gear up to nationals.  Just a quick shout out to Forbes and Davies for the help, they've been brilliant.  Neo leathers and gloves, Airoh helmets.  Airoh have been great.  Dunlop tires plus I'm sure a few other of Steve's sponsers that will be mentioned in future posts!

I will be keeping everything up-to-date with all my racing adventures so keep a look out for new posts.  The next time on the bike will be this Friday for some testing before the second day of the King of Ruapuna series on Saturday.  So there'll be another update shortly!

Until then, keep safe everyone.