REPORT:

Getting Ready

Greville picks up one of his Trophies .... in his EDIasia Pit Shirt of course (Photo Copyright Greg & Jen Photos)

After the disaster of Snetterton I had an awful lot of work to do before Lydden. I needed a two pronged attack to try to get at least one bike ready in time.

I dropped my bike off at Dynotech on Tuesday evening and picked up my spare bike that I had previously left with them. I had left it with them after my crash at Ledanon. The intention was to prepare this bike, from a road bike, with all the race spares I had picked up over the last 18 months but after my Ledanon crash I just did not have time whilst I was trying to repair my No 1 bike so I had dropped it off to Dynotech to do the engine, and get it to the stage where it could be setup on the Dyno.

Then plan was for me then to do all the chassis and race prep, and I had the evenings and one weekend to do all that before Lydden, no problem, or so I thought. I could not imagine how long it actually takes to race prep a bike. This was all whilst Dynotech repaired my engine in the No 1 bike.

I had a call from Dynotech to say that when they took the engine out a mounting point from the frame came with it, so yet another problem to solve.

Thanks to Mark Hill of MHP, who picked my bike up from Dynotech as he was passing, repairing the frame and dropping it back off to them Monday evening before Lydden. The added problem was that Lydden is not allowed to have 3 noisy days in a row so the test day was on the Thursday, meaning 1 day less to get the bike back together.

In the meantime I was struggling to get my No 2 bike prepared but it was almost there and as I was going to be down at Lydden I decided to take the Friday off as well, leaving me an extra day to get it finished if necessary, assuming that Dynotech were able to get my No 1 bike back together.

Andy from Dynotech called me and said to get to them at about 10.30pm by which time my bike should be ready. Another very late night but at least I would have my bike back. On arrival at 10.45pm it was still on the Dyno and just needed one more final Dyno run which would be about 10 minutes. Those of you that know Dynotech will know that that isn't really the case. Anyway, I managed to get out of there with my bike at just gone 1am. Huge thanks to them, once again, for getting my bike done at silly o'clock to get me out for the practice day.

Once again thanks to Jen for getting to Lydden early enough to save a spot with some power in the lower paddock right near everything. I even managed to park up in such a way to save space for some more friends, so it was all looking good.

THURSDAY

Practice Day

I missed the first session as I needed tyres fitting that were on wheels from Red's bike that I had borrowed at Snetterton.

The next two sessions were spent running the engine in and, although I have raced there previously, I was trying to learn the track. This was the first test day that I had ever done at Lydden so I really wanted to make full use of it. I had to run two bikes in and also wanted to experiment with some different gearing.

Lydden is a short and relatively slow circuit with no fast straights so you can either gear the bike down to use all the gears or just gear up to use up to 4th gear. I had always used Brands gearing but found a lot of gear changing was needed and I felt it took up too much time and jeopardised lap times. I tried something in between Brands and Snetterton gearing but was still using 5th gear. I tried one smaller tooth on the rear and found it much better just using up to 4th gear.

I managed to get my No 2 bike on track for one session but found it required a lot of suspension adjustment to iron out a harsh ride and as there was only one remaining session I decided I needed to go out on my No 1 bike for a final try to put everything together for a quick lap. Unfortunately because I had been using my battery charger on my No 2 bike, the battery quickly went flat and the session was wasted.

Well, I achieved some of what I set out to do, got one bike ready for the weekend's racing with some good gearing, and the other needed some work but at least I had the Friday to try to sort it out. And I would have a spare bike in case anything went wrong again.

FRIDAY

I had a bit of a lie in as all the late nights had caught up with me.

I got out of my van only to find someone blocking in Moose's Gazebo who had gone back to work for the day. They hadn't set up so a polite word was had before I headed of for a shower. They were still there when I came back and it seemed they really were not prepared to move, even though one of the marshals pointed out a nice flat area that for some reason was still empty and only a few meters up the hill. They had travelled a long way and just wanted to rest! They didn't want to 'fall out' as we were to be neighbours all weekend, so offered to move a foot back, great I thought. At this point I really couldn't be bothered. You can't deal with people like that. It set the tone for the weekend for me unfortunately.

The whole place seemed a bit quiet but I got on with the jobs needed to get my spare bike ready. I also had some new tyres fitted to No 1 bike ready for race day. Mid/late afternoon and Suzie of the Feisty team turned up, although I thought she was to arrive a lot later, and wanted to set up in the space that myself and Moose had saved, this meant I was unable to finish off my spare bike as, due to our inconsiderate 'neighbours', I had to move my gazebos and all my gear so that Suzie could fit their teams Marquee in, and even worse it started to rain and I got soaked.

SATURDAY

Practice

I woke up to rain so the wets went on and I just pottered around making sure I stayed on.

Race I

I started from pole and just got my head down and before I knew it the last lap flag was out and I went on to win it.

I was a little surprised at this as Lydden is not a circuit that I particularly like although I do seem to go reasonably well there.

There were also some fast people who do like it and I thought that they would be giving me some trouble. In particular Pat Mills for whom Lydden is his local circuit and he goes extremely well there.

Some of the lap times suggested that the remaining races would be a lot closer as there were quite a few people who put in a quicker lap than me.

Race 2

I got another good start and was leading the race until lap 5 when I got a false neutral going in to Chessons drift forcing me to carry the brakes and push me very wide whilst I searched for a gear - eventually finding 4th when I should be in third.

This gave Pat Mills the opportunity he was looking for and he dived under me going in to the corner. I didn't have the drive in 4th to stay with him around Chessons so he pulled a gap.

Pat seemed a bit ragged and admitted to me later that he didn't want to lead so soon and was lining me up for the last lap, as he wasn't sure how he would go leading a race. I slowly caught up but we came across backmarkers and before I knew it any opportunity to get close enough to try to get him back was past.

Congratulations to him for his first SB400 win.

SUNDAY

Practice

I went out for practice just to get the feel for the bike before the first race.

Sadly Pat Mills fell which meant that his confidence may have been dented slightly.

He was the most likely person, and one that I wouldn't have minded being beaten by as it's his circuit, and besides he's a fair few points behind me at the moment, but I'm sure that will change.

Race 1

I was starting second on the grid as Pat Mills was on pole. I was fairly confident that if I did my usual start I would lead in to the first corner and that's how it panned out.

Once again I got my head down but on about lap six I spied some frantic waving and on the seventh lap I realised that it was some friends indicating that I should get a move on. I presumed that someone must be right behind me.

I've never had a pit board before and found that when I did look behind to see if anyone is close, and they're not, I back off too much, so I just keep going for it, but I sometimes relax too much and can back off by mistake !

I knew that I had to turn it up a bit and concentrated on slightly more defensive lines, braking later and getting on the gas earlier. It worked as I won the race although by a very close margin. It seemed Leam Lyon had really upped the pace and caught me fast, but on inspecting the lap times, once I had been given the signal, I was able to knock half a second off my lap times which surprised me quite a bit as I had managed to go 0.6 of a second faster than I had ever been around Lydden with a very respectable 44.257 second lap.

Race 2

Starting from pole again I got a good start and got my head down.

Everyone had been getting faster and I feared a few would be past me. After a few laps I looked for my friends on the pit 'bank' and they were motionless so I took it that I just needed to carry on at that pace. We had agreed earlier that I only wanted a signal if someone was close to me, as I didn't want to find myself backing off if I had a gap.

It worked - I led from start to finish but it was close behind, another few laps and I think Rik Ballerini would have been giving me some trouble as he seems to have finally got his bike working, especially on one of his favourite tracks.

Summary

Well, after the Snetterton disaster I was extremely happy with my results, especially at a circuit that I don't dislike but don't particularly like.

It has put me in the lead of the Superbike 400 Championship by 66 points but there is a long way to go so I will still have to work hard.