5 - 6 July 2003 中國珠海摩托車賽第3場 趣味花邊

“Going back to the last race (in June) things really seemed to be going well. I was getting to do regular 1minute 43 on the R1 and Nick was not far behind my times (but couldn’t quite kick my arse yet, he he!). My times on the R6 were getting better too as I was eventually getting the standard suspension where I wanted it, now doing 1:44 which was good for a standard bike. All I have done to the R6 (which is a year 2000 model) is … Brake hoses, different fork oil, Full system Akraprovic exhaust, ‘520’ chain and sprocket conversion and different footrest. Otherwise it’s standard. I use standard brake pads, standard air filter, no jetting changes to the carburetor (although I did try different main jets but standard works best and keeps the bike running smoothly), standard rear shock and I still use the handlebars in their original position (on top of the fork yoke).
Anyway, I screwed up in June after high-siding the R6. I broke my hand (see the nice X-ray pics, six screws and a titanium plate) and bruised my back which hurt a lot more than my hand. The July race was only 3 weeks later so I wasn’t really ready after the operation on my hand and 2 weeks in a hospital bed. Nick was ready and Paulwhy was just waiting to kick both our arses … we couldn’t let that happen..

Saturday Qualifying and I decided it would be best to ride as little as possible so that I didn’t stress my hand too much. Nick rode a lot, he was determined to beat me and PaulWhy and in the first qualifying he did!    Aaaaargh, can’t let that happen. In second qualifying both Nick and I improved our times, Paulwhy got a bit held up with backmarkers I think, Nick went half a second faster and I went half a second faster than Nick, so I was pleased. Nick never seems to be bothered with the qualifying results, he likes to race, just wants to beat the guy in front until there are no more guys in front of him, quite a good strategy I guess.

Race day

 

I really thought I would be in a lot of pain with my back and hand after all the riding on Saturday but to tell the truth, I was feeling a lot better, I guess the exercise had done me some good. We both did warm up to scrub in new tyres but the day was getting hot and it was going to be tough to race the Open class and the 600SS class.

 We had a visitor for this event, Cameron Donald from Australia. ‘Cam’ is a good friend of mine so it was really nice to see him again, I took him shopping in Zhuhai and we had a great day laughing about. Just to clear things up, Cameron is his fist name not Donald, and friends call him Cam. We will be seeing more of Cam in September as he is doing the Asian FIM Road Racing Championship. His first race is in Malaysia this weekend and I really hope he wins. This guy is Talented but it’s hard to get noticed in the racing world so I hope he makes a big impression at the FIM races, I’m confident he will.

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The race winner was pretty much decided already, Cam had done 1:40.9 in qualifying so no one was going to come close, however, his visit had helped the other ManLeeTat rider a lot. Chow Ho Wan has done fast lap times on a 600 before but he was having some problems getting used to the new bike, but this race he’s doing 1:42 again! Great.

 

We had another new competitor in class 1 this time as BG decided to enter He Zi Xian on the ZX6RR and he’s fast. Cam would be in the same race but in class 2 with BG’s other rider. So we had 3 fast guys on 600s to fight with. Some people are surprised that a 600 can be faster than a 1000cc bike, well the there are only 2 places on the track at ZIC when to 1000s are faster and that is not for very long, the 600s brake faster and carry more corner speed which more than makes up for the speed at those 2 places.

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So the lights changed, Cam was gone and I was fighting with the two ZX6R riders, I could hold them up by taking a tight line in the turns, they need to keep their corner speed high so when I got in their way it helped Nick to get involved too. However, after just two laps I started to feel really bad, it was damn hot and riding at that pace is hard even under normal conditions let alone with injuries. (that’s my excuse). The two BG bikes got past with Nick following and then PaulWhy. I had a look back and saw there was no one else in my class so I tried to settle into a rhythm so I could at least get some points for this race. Nick and Paulwhy had pulled away by now, Nick was still keeping in touch with the BG bikes while Paulwhy had dropped back a bit but was in a safe 3rd (CL1).

Although Nick was ahead, it had been a hard fight to get there, we were a little late for the grid formation and missed the formation lap, which meant Nick had only the warm up lap to scrub in a new rear tyre. I tried shouting to him that it would be fine when we were on the grid, I’d fitted mine ready for the morning warm up so it was all scrubbed in but Nick wasn’t so happy about missing the formation lap and having to do the first few race laps on a brand new tyre. It was something that upset his rhythm for the whole race, even though he’d got in front of me and Paulwhy, mentally it was hard, and with the heat playing a big part, it was easy to loose concentration so you had to focus extra hard.

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Race 2.

 

After all the riding it was almost a relief that this was the last race of the day for us, then again I really wanted to get a better position than 4th and I was feeling OK. We all formed on the grid, did the usual 5 minutes of photos until the grid cleared. 1 warm up lap and we’re back on the grid waiting for the lights. The normal sequence is, the guy with red flags in front of the grid waits for an all clear from the back of the grid to make sure everyone is there, he then walks off and we wait for the lights to go red, they stay on for between 3-7 seconds and when the red goes off, we go for it. Well, the guy with the flags walked off, engines revved, then the red light came on … and Cam just took off! He jumped the start, other riders saw him and edged forward but waited for the red to go off before starting, Cam was almost at turn 1 when the red light went off. Normally he’d have gotten a time penalty or maybe a Stop/go penalty (pull into the pit lane, stop and then go) but there was a crash at Turn 1, we at the front knew nothing of this so we had our heads down and I was in the lead, then when we got to turn 10 I saw red flags, it meant the race has been stopped, 5 bikes screamed past, they hadn’t seen the red flags yet but slowed down when they got to turn 11 and we all put our hands up so everyone would slow. Cam too had slowed right down, I pulled up next to him at turn14, he lifted his visor and said, in a typical Australian accent “What was I thinking!” it was actually very funny but I guess you had to be there.

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So, because of the crash at T1 on the first lap the race was restarted and no penalty to Cam.  We formed on the grid again, waited another 5 minutes … in the heat and went through the whole start procedure again. This time Cam took it a bit easier on the start, he went wide into turn 1 and I went under him on the inside but Cam came in tight to the second apex and closed me off, I almost had my knee on the grass, then I heard the sound of metal hitting tarmac. Nick had been using titanium knee sliders so at first I thought it was him but it was a much louder sound, ‘oh no, Nick’s crashed’ I thought but a quick look over my shoulder revealed it was the Number 3 bike from ManLeeTat ‘Fung Jai’, he’d gone in way too hot and just lost the front but it held Nick and Paulwhy up so I got my head down to see if I could pull away. The two green BG bikes were with me but I managed to stay in front for the first 3 laps. Then I just started to drop back, I could only hold on at that pace for 3 laps, just like race 1, until my hand started to hurt. Actually it wasn’t so much the pain but I could feel the stress on the metal plate and screws in my hand. (Nick had almost exactly the same problem last year only he had 23 screws and 3 plates in his arm and hand!). So Nick closed me down, I saw him coming and let him past safely, I wanted to try to follow him to keep ahead of the others but it was too much for me. As the 2 BG bikes got past I stayed with them for lap 4. ‘Yin’ (number12) had just passed Nick into turn 7 but on the long stretch towards turn 9 (T8 is a fast kink) Nick pulled along side, ‘Yin’ left a big gap on his right side but suddenly swerved to his right, not yet braking before T9 they would have been doing about 140+mph! Yin’s bike hit Nick side on!  I saw sparks and the two bikes kinda bounced off each other. Now that is competitive racing and neither guy backed off! Nick stayed with them for the rest of the race but couldn’t get past Yin who was just over a second ahead at the line. Paulwhy had got past me to so I took another disappointing 4th place. Booooo.

TT Email: tracktorque@hotmail.com


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