The first chance to try out the new bike was SOAR practice weekend. Sadly the Saturday was a washout but we got a good few sessions in on the Sunday. The bike was hard to start and running rough at first, in the first practice session it didn’t even rev high enough down the straight to change up! After a couple of sessions it cleared up and was running great. I hadn’t ridden anything since last season but this bike on the Ohlins suspension felt great right from the first corner, usually the first few laps of the season feel sketchy. In the afternoon I had multiple problems with the gear shifter linkage – bolts falling out and then the pivot bolt sheared ending my sessions.
Saturday Qualifiers
It rained in the morning so I got the B bike out and installed the rain tires. I softened off the front suspension a bit over winter to set it up for wet weather but by the time the Lost Era Lightweight qualifier was starting, it was drying up. I don’t have any DOT (street) tires anymore so I had to go out on the rains and risk burning them up in the drying conditions. Got the holeshot again and then just waited for the Pros to come past. When Rian came past dragging his knee I knew there was more grip but I had a cheap pair of rain pants over my leathers and didn’t want to wreck them by putting my knee down! LMAO
The Am Legends qualifier was the last race of the day and the track was dry enough for slicks by then so I took the new bike out. Sadly a bolt fell out of the gear shifter linkage AGAIN half way round the first lap so I had to pull in and start from the back of the grid for the race 🙁
Sunday Races
Nice dry day today and the shifter linkage bolts were all tightened and lock tighted! Got a couple of good practice sessions in with no shifter issues and did some decent lap times. First race was Am Legends where I was starting from the back.
In Lost Era Lightweight the GoPro SD card filled up by the time I got to pit out so no footage of that race :(. My start was decent but then when I had no one to chase my pace fell off a bit until my good buddy Simon came past that spurred me on to try and stay with him – I hung on to finish 8th.
