tl;dr didn’t race much, went fast, blew some stuff up. Had fun.
Mick’s season report inspired me to actually sketch down what I did. Not as a competition – he had way more success than I did, but so I can set some goals and see how it’ll pan out. Click on the ol’ read more to check out how it went for me.
The 2015 PCRA racing season kicked off early at WP in February and I have to admit I was pretty nervous about how the year was going to pan out. I’d had some good individual results the previous year, but a dropped valve in the middle of the season brought things undone, so I was looking to string together a full season, not just some good one-off results.
One of the challenges to this would be the fact that the motor that had dropped the valve was the fully rebuilt race motor that came with the bike, however I’d had to pull that out and put in a high kilometer second hand, bog stock motor that I bought off Charlie. I’d pulled the head off it, cleaned out the wasps nest from the exhaust ports, tidied up the piston tops, checked the valve clearances, moved over the stator, carbs and headers, and changed the oil. Other than that it was unmodified.
It must’ve been a good motor though, because it lasted almost the whole season without any problems, the final round being the only one that it gave me any issues with an oil leak from the clutch cover gasket that was my own lack of preparation.
A highlight of the season for me was taking my first outright race win, and then backing it up with a few more throughout the season, ultimately ending up winning the PCRA PreModern Formula 2 title for 2015 alongside a couple of first place trophies in the 1 Hour events as well.
A lowpoint, racing at SMSP South Circuit and realising that I was nowhere near fit enough to race even one class there, never mind two classes. The following meeting at WP confirmed this as I struggled to keep in front of Harley on his 400 and my laptimes were nearly 2 seconds of my best….and knowing that Harley was yelling in his helmet “get out of the way you fat bastard” didn’t help either. It may only be club racing, but you still have to work hard to be at the pointy end and it was a timely reminder that I needed to do both more personal preparation as well as more bike preparation.
So 2016 has a much later start to the season and the races compressed into the middle of the year, so I started on the fitness and weight loss in September and I’m planning on taking the next couple of months to get the bike fully prepped, all with a plan to improve on 2015 and hopefully secure another title along the way.
I’d like to make special mention of my pit mates over the season who made the whole thing so enjoyable and entertaining, in particular Gos, Chops, Nelso and Leanne, and also all the other characters at the track like Steveo, Harley, Jessa, Andrew, Adam, Jonesy, Lech etc.
The new season of racing for the PCRA in 2015 is starting with Round 1 on Saturday the 7th of February up at Wakefield Park. Come up and watch TGR represent with Chops racing in P5 250 and P5 350, and me racing in PreModern F2 and PreModern F1.
The club have changed the program around a bit this year in an attempt to get a more sensible grouping of the different bikes and classes, and also to get some more track time for some of the different riders. What this means for me is they’ve separated out PreModern F1 and F2, so I can go back to entering two classes like I used to do on the LC. It also means the objection to the PM F3 bikes racing up a class in PM F2, and so being on track with PM F1 bikes, should no longer be an issue.
I suspect there will still be some riders put out by the changes, but there always will be I guess.
I’m hoping the club continue the other changes they were implementing late last year in an attempt to keep the meeting flowing and get through the full program without having to shorten races e.g. getting strict with the scrutineers and looking at the bikes that have crashed to see if there was anything preventable that caused it. They are also planning on rotating the race group that starts first at the meeting between different meetings, so if there are delays or cancellations then it’s not the same class getting a raw deal every time.
It’s going to be an interesting year!
Hello People
With the entry lists up and Garage allocations done the time is approaching for the final round of club racing for 2014 with the St George MCC on the 8th & 9th November at Eastern Creek. Should be a huge round with 260 competitors at the moment including some big names, Aidan Wagner, Aaron Morris and Mitch Levy. Looking forward to getting the R6 out there for the final round with all new front suspension (Thanks Suspensionsmith!) and at least an additional 10hp thanks to 2 TGR stickers :). If your in the area drop by for a sticky beak, should be a awesome racing!
Binksy
This is the race history chart for the 2014 PCRA 1-hour enduro (cut short to 50 minutes) for P4 P5 126cc-500cc/P6 250cc/P6 500cc & Pre-Modern F3 bikes.
Much larger version, generated differently, is available here.
This is the race history chart calculated here at TGR for the RB Racing / St George MCC 2014 4 hour endurance race. The vertical axis is the difference in seconds to the winner’s overall average lap time; think of 0s of being a perfect rider who circulated at exactly the winner’s overall lap time. The gradient of the series tells you the rider’s pace: a line going up is gaining, and a line going down is losing time. The winner, by how it’s constructed, ends up at 0s at the final lap. All the others are beneath.
[visualizer id=”384″]The entry list for round 1 of the FXRRC is up. Looks like there are a few entries and some of the fast boys doing some prep for the following weekend will be out there too.
