Round 7 – Knockhill – 9 August 2014

Once again The 3 Team Armys travelled far and wide to compete in the best endurance race series in the UK. This time as far as Scotland, a
fairly epic journey for some who dwell as far away as Portsmouth!

And once again they returned with very different results and mixed fortunes. Let’s start on the very positive side; Team Army 2 – Spence and Moggy are the Clubman 600 Champions and 600 Rookie champions for 2014. There is a vote to make the last round double points which may mathematically refute this claim, but one, its unlikely to be voted through and two, even if it is all Team 2 would need to do is finish in either of the last two races to fully clinch the championship. So to put a super positive spin on the Knockhill round we are stating after yet another impeccable race, finishing top Rookies and first in clubman 600s they are “The Championés!”. Having said that there is a little blip on their lap record towards the end of the race it looks like someone has been grass tracking as there are some unusual lap times???

So for Team 2 Knockhill was a resounding success, no dramas (admitted to!), fast laps, slick change overs and no penalties, showing the other teams how its done.

Then Team 1 and 3 pretty much did the opposite, lots of drama, penalties galore, breaking down, crashing and generally making everything as difficult as possible!

Team 1 who had visions at the start of the season of becoming clubman 1000 Rookie champions had a bad day at the orifice! Although they qualified 4th overall and ahead of their main Clubman rivals, that was about the best thing that happened all weekend. Pep started the race and had his usual blast off the line running in second behind Team Big Lads for the opening few laps. It wasn’t long before he reined Big Joe in and lead the race but 12 laps in disaster struck. Pep crashed running into a fairly fast (3rd gear close to 3 figures) fast right hander and his bike cartwheeled dug in and breathed its final breath. It had also happened at the far side of the circuit, but he used his military ingenuity to bum a lift off a rally car, so he got the transponder back reasonably quickly. He was sore but no breaks or serious injury, he bounces well.

This spill and delay put us stone cold last 2 laps down on everyone else. We did sort of start a weak recovery. Pep borrowed Deano’s bike but it did cause a few complications in rider/bike order and a few mistakes were made that in hindsight we could have organised better. As the race progressed we did begin to haul in a few of the teams in our class and a 3rd place began to beckon. No sooner was it dangled in front of us, it was ripped away again! An unfortunate penalty for crossing the pit exit line and then Deano’s bike broke down. This again happened at the far side of the track. Deano’s ingenuity however was not quite as grand as a Rally car and he appeared back at the pits on the back of a scooter! So Loz ended up finishing the last few laps and his gixxer was the only bike left out of the 3 that started. Team 1 finished behind Team 3 for the first time this year – so when I write up their race they don’t really care how it went as they beat Team 1!!!

To be honest they didn’t do that much better. A pretty slow get away had them running in 13th but they had a steady few sessions and climbed to 10th. They too had a trip to the kitty litter. Lee out braked himself into turn 1 – allegedly due to Deano and Spence squeezing him out -and gouged a trough through the kitty litter and when he hit the grass tumbled off. He did not do too much damage and remounted to limp back to the pits. Obviously an unscheduled stop takes much longer to turn around and then Lee’s bike needed fettling for his next session. They also got a penalty for going over rider time, probably due to the delay needed to fix Lee’s bike. Good solid riding from Iain (including “the wheelie of the day…a full on 90 degree clocks to face job”)  and some excellent 56sec laps late in the race from Lee hauled them away from Team 1’s grasp. They finished one place ahead in 9th overall and their highest, 4th in class, finish this season. They also put some of this down to massive help from their pit crew Kerry Murphy and Julie Simpson.

Our next round is in a few weeks in Cheshire at Oulton Park, Team 2 will hopefully be announced by the organisers as Champions, Team 1 aim to complete a race without penalties and Team 3 just want to beat Team 1 again! Dreamers……..

 

 

If anyone has any photos that can be posted into the blog, please message Lewis.

Round 6 – Snetterton – 26 July 2014

So round 6 (5 for us as we missed Pembrey) and a few depleted teams set off for Snetterton in Norflok. Team 1 were missing Deano and Team 3 missing Darryl.
We were also missing most of our WAGS so we starved and lived on pot noodles and cereal for the weekend, made us realise how important they are!

It started with a real scare for Moggy, he decided to do a basic service the night before race and test day at the track and with a little help from Pep managed to snap a spark plug thread off in the engine. Actually with a lot of help from Pep! After two hours of gradually stripping down the bike and after numerous attempts to get the thread out it looked like an engine out job!!! Then at the eleventh hour the thread moved and triumph, it came out! Everyone was clapping and cheering a bit surreal, the relief on Moggy and Peps faces!

The test day went well got some good sessions in and it was very worthwhile. Loz found he was hitting the rev limiter half way along the straights and it wasn’t due to his prowess at getting early drive on to them. The standard cog sizes for his bike are 17 tooth front 43 rear. So after removing the front sprocket cover to find it was loose and almost about to come off, it also turned out to be a 14 tooth. 3 down at the front is 9 at the rear

So his 6th gear was more like 4th! A size 16 was sourced and fitted and problem solved no more rev limiters. Snetterton is renowned for destroying engines so we had a real going over of everything the night before the race with lots of help from Silicone racing, Russ Mountford, Dean Harrison and Johnny the mechanic, they helped us all weekend. Thanks guys, and you are mentioned later.

Ian didn’t arrive until late o clock the night before the race and had a lot of fettling to do to his ZX10, so Team 3 were rushing around on race morning with scrutineering and signing on still to do, then we all got caught out as Hottrax brought our qualifying session forward 25 minutes! A mad rush into leathers and our first mistakes of the weekend began to happen. Team 1 brought Pep in far too early and as he was the one on the pace and warming up to a flyer we could have qualified much better. Team 2 only did very few laps and Team 3 only just made their compulsory 3 laps each.

There was a long wait as the race was not starting till 3pm so we watched some of the sprints and watched how Silicone got on in the National 1000 race! Shock and horror when it was red flagged and it was poor Russ Mountford who was taken out by an over zealous corner approach from another rider. It was doubtful he would make the endurance race, but he is a tough northerner and even though he only had 1 leg (well technically speaking it was still there but not doing much with the bruising and cuts) Silicone finished only a few seconds behind the race winners in second place overall.

For Team Army it was a mixed race. Team 2 were at their unbeatable best, smooth, fast and well organised. Everything went like clockwork and they did their usual of finishing top in Clubman 600 and top Rookies. Yet more trophies to find somewhere to display! To top it all they even won the sorrymate.com prize of £150. They definitely had the gods on their side this event as the prize was for the youngest aggregate age of each team in class! Fnnnarr Fnnnarr!

So what of Teams 1 and 3! well we think our gods were on an extended NAAFI break. Team 3 had major reliability problems. Ian was on a hectic schedule having arrived late the evening before the race. Lots of bike prep, all the admin and scrutineering the next morning, brought forward qualifying and then straight after the race he had to shoot back to barracks as he had a Mess do he was committed to attending! So with all that it was not surprising his bike let him down. First his foot peg sheared off, nearly ran over his own foot, then the hectic repair came loose again and then he ran out of fuel, coughing and spluttering back to the pits! What he didn’t do which is highly unusual for him, is crash! So Lee was the man keeping the Team in a respectable position in the race, he estimates he did just short of 2 hours of the 3 hour event! He should definitely be on telly next week having spent so much time on track. Well done Lee.

Finally Team 1. It all started so rosy, a brilliant start from Pep, he made up 4 places by the first corner and kept them. At the 2 hour point we were comfortably ahead of our rivals and second in Clubman 1000 class. Pep was smashing lap times out as fast as any other Clubman teams and Loz was there abouts. Then it all went taliban. We had a miserable pit stop. Pep found out, as he rolled his bike out of the garage to do the change over, that he had no front brake. His fluid had boiled! There was a flurry of activity but some poor calls and too much time lost meant we dropped back a good lap on our rivals. It was still not over and as the last session started the Team we had to beat to keep our Rookie championship hopes alive left the pit for the last session alongside Loz. There was a bit of a ding dong on
track, many swaps of the lead and gapping and closing, then the killer blow. The race steward awarded us a 1 minute stop go penalty.

So that was that, race over! Apparently we exceeded our 30 minute on track time, which we believe they got wrong and somehow confused our lengthy pit stop with time on track? Loz duly sat in the naughty corner for a minute as we dropped to 4th in class and more importantly second Rookies, more points dropped!

A few other things to mention. Firstly the grid this weekend was awesome, TT winners, Moto GP riders, BSB regulars and the Motogrande 1000 race would have graced any top national race series with the stars in it. These same stars we got to race against later in the endurance, well more like overtaken and lapped by them. Pep and Spence both had a sprint race on Sunday and both surpassed all expectations. As they had not qualified they had to start at the back of the grids. Pep finished 3rd and won his class out of 39 starters and Spence finished 2nd in his race! Unfortunately our satellite team Endeavour racing
had a mare. Big bike problems and Skinny was still riding injured, they had to drop to a one bike team which did not do them any favours, but at least they finished which is always the aim in endurance racing. Prevail over the myriad of problems that get thrown at you! One of our good friends Craig Robertson who is always on hand to help, blew his engine to bits (again) and the Clubman 1000 championship leaders T watson bikes rider Rick Dickinson had a huge crash in a sprint race on the Sunday. 165 mph down the back straight and brake failure, bike in bits, straight to Hospital but on the road to recovery! Get well soon.

The good things about this weekend, were:

a) Team 2

b) The weather

c) None of us crashed!