31st Aug-1st Sept Ng At Castle Combe

I'll be taking the little green bike out for some racing fun at Castle Combe this weekend with North Glous race club.
Apparently it's also a Motorcycle Grand Festival and there will be a few of the bigger names in the motorcycling world.
castlecombecircuit.co.uk/race-days/motorcycle-grand-national
There are camping facilities if anyone fancies a weekend trip or a longish day one.
I have qualifying and one race Sat and 2 races Sunday. There will of course be cake

 

Regular updates required please

 

Well, my weekend racing was a bust. Damn bike!

Emma and I went up Thursday, set up camp and settled in for what was going to be a fun weekend of racing and enjoying the Festival of Motorcycling. Barry Sheene race bikes being ridden by people such as Foggy, Tommy Bridewell, Steve Parish etc. Very cool. The paddock was already pretty busy and was only going to get fuller over the weekend so we were lucky to get a good place to pitch up near scrutineering and the exit from the track.

Friday was a trackday so I got out on the bike and started to learn the track . Felt a bit like I imagine a goldfish might for the first 2 sessions. Round the track "ooh c**p its the Essses!" Round the next lap "Oooh c**p, its the Esses again!" Decided to book an instructor for after lunch just to see if my lines were ok or well off. However, after the lunch break my bike refused to start. Same issue as I'd had at Cadwell, which I thought I'd gotten fixed. We did eventually get it going and I had a couple of good track sessions so finished the day a high having finally got the hang of where I was going and in what gear .

Saturday morning however - the bike refused to start. Lots of people tried to help but finally one of the guys used a compression gauge and discovered that my bike has 15psi compression across all 4 ports whereas it should be in the 100 mark. The overall consensus in the 400 field is that its the timing or an issue with the valves. Needless to say I was pretty gutted as that was my race weekend over before it started. I told the race office I would no longer be racing and resigned myself to just cheering friends on.
Chatting to some other race buddies a fellow racer, Amy, said that her boyfriend had a race ready zxr400 and that I could use it. So, I rushed off, told the office not to withdraw my place and thought that Sunday I would be racing after all. Amy and I set off on Sat evening on a 3 hour round trip to pick up the bike. We got back to the race paddock at 9.30pm, started swapping the gear linkage (boyfriend had removed a quick shifter a few weeks prior) and then discovered - the bike wouldn't start. We worked on it till 11pm but still no luck. Up at 6 the next morning to try and get going - still nothing. Whatever he had done to remove the quickshifter had disabled the ignition. By 9am the game was up. I was not going to be racing at all . Gutted does not even begin to describe how I felt.

Still, on the plus side, I got to enjoy the sunshine (and a bit of rain), catch up with quite a few friends who came to see me and who I hadn't seen in a long time, cheer on friends who were racing, have a Sunday roast and eat ice-cream

The trials and tribulations of club racing. Sometimes I do wonder "what the hell am I doing this for" but then you get out on track in a race and it all becomes clear again

 

shame you didn't get to race.
but just add it to the rounds next year
about time we saw some pots
all you have to do is get enough to afford it now

 

Shame you didn't get to race after all that effort.