Bemsee Round 2 - Snetterton 28/05 In short; "the most fun you can have with your clothes on!"
After missing Round 1 at Oulton due to seized calipers my racing season kicked off at Snetterton in perfect conditions. Following repair by a local bike shop I pulled out of a round at Brands Hatch Indy with NGRRC as the lever was coming back to the bar :( . With the lack of feel almost leading to a big off at Paddock Hill Bend it was time to call it a day and send it to Simon. I thought this racing lark is supposed to be easy??
With a completely rebuilt brake system from the master cylinder down and they felt fantastic. Surprising how much you can get out of HEL lines, EBC discs and SBS pads with a standard SV master cylinder (once they've been taken care of by someone who knows what they were doing of course). Massive thanks to Craig Kennelly (Ducati Tri-Options) and Alex Mann (Thundersport Minitwins) for attempting to fix it in the paddock and lending parts when they had their own races to focus on.
Friday -Test day I'd been round here before on a track day on my ZX6R so the Friday test day was simply adjusting my reference markers for the 72bhp missile (ha!) that is the little SV Minitwin and learning to ride a more limited and less forgiving machine. Little attention was given to lap times as I found my way around but they were close to 2:40 (SLOW!). I got faster each session but started having problems with false neutrals in the afternoon, particularly when clipping down the box for Agostini, Nelson and Murrays. We chalked this down to fatigue and didn't believe it would be an issue the following day. Got the bike through scrutineering after hastily removing some vinyls and tweaking the rain light wiring and the evening was spent double-checking everything and putting the Haynes manual's list of torque settings to good use.
Saturday - I wasn't the quickest to get back into my rhythm on Saturday morning and found it tricky to gauge my speed when qualifying with other rookies on 600s and 1000s. Ended up on the last row of the grid for my first race in the combined Rookie Minitwins and Thunderbike Sport race.
RACE 1 I was a bit nervous ahead of my first grid start, my practice starts on Saturday had either been wheelies or taking off like I was popping to the shops and I couldn't find somewhere in between. As soon as the lights dropped though I seemed to figure it out and got a good drive into turn 1 ahead of a few in front of me (was the best feeling I've ever had on a motorcycle). From there I gradually got passed by riders and finished 17th out 18 Minitwins with a best lap of 2:32, with false neutrals rearing their head every so often , including a trip to the grass just before the 'bombhole'!
Ahead of Race 2 we started adjusting rearsets and gear lever, dropping the shift linkage lower to try and make things easier for downshifts (which are actually up as the bike is in GP shift), reducing some of the fuel in the tank (I started Race 1 with about 15 litres) and most importantly adjusting the tyre pressures. The front had felt like it was dragging into slow corners and my brother didn't think I was getting the exit drive I could've done from the Pirelli SC2 rear compared to other riders. We pushed the front up to 34psi and dropped the rear to 25psi.
RACE 2 - Again I actually got a great start off the line for Race 2 and was able to tack on to the riders in front of me for a lot longer, reducing my lap time to a low 2:28* (which was to be the best of the weekend) and again finishing 17th out of 18. The changes we made really helped settle the bike and after reducing my lap time by 4s between races I felt like I'd won the thing. Big thanks to my brother Dan for his spannering, and Andy Flux and Dan Nemati for their advice and of course the Sitramoto boys for being on hand when I needed their help!
Sunday Races 3 and 4 didn't go as well as Race 2. Overnight everybody else had seemed to up their game and reduce their times further and I couldn't get to where I was on Saturday afternoon. I'd been holding my foot on the lever to stop the bike jumping into a neutral after downshifts but when that had mixed results I started taking the slower corners a gear higher, which helped me learn to get quicker on corner entry but lost time on the way out as the revs dropped off a bit. On a few occasions I really did use 'all' of the track on entry to the Bentley straight and the bike got a bit dusty! Maintained my 17th out of 18 in both races and left Snetterton happy as a pig in sh**e that I made it to all four races, didn't drop the bike and now counting days until Cadwell 25-27 June!