EAST FORTUNE 14/15 SEPTEMBER 2002
The pressure was on for this two-day meeting at East Fortune. I was 5 points ahead of my nearest rival in the club championship.
The meeting itself was really busy with around 200 entries. The F400 grid was completely full, as it has been all season, with 42 bikes.
The weather for the weekend was good; no rain forecast, but not too sunny or warm.
I was really looking forward to this round as there were loads of people I knew coming.
Saturday practice went quite well. I felt quite fast although the front end was washing out a bit at Pates, which I couldn’t understand. We went down a tooth on the back sprocket as it was revving out on the back straight. This was fine for second practice.
There were a few guys from England, including a couple of aces, so things were not going to be easy.
SATURDAY
Race 1:
Got a good start and got out of the first corner in third or fourth, improving to second by Railway bend. I was beginning to settle into chasing the leader but on lap two, the race was red flagged, as there was a rider down at Railway. I later found out this was my biggest competitor, from previous rounds at East Fortune.
Next start was not as good, getting me off in fourth, improving to 3rd by the end of lap 1. I was beginning to settle and focus on the no 2 rider who I was quite close to by lap 3. In the previous two laps I had felt the front end very vague over the bumps on the exit to Esses2 and couldn’t understand, as I had not change any suspension or tyre settings.
Towards the end of lap 3 coming out of the very fast Esses 2, the front end let go and I was off sliding over onto the grass. As the bike went over the edge of the track onto the grass, it caught the grass and went end over end..........SHIT!
I was OK, but when we got the bike back to the pit we found that it was worse than we had expected. The bottom yolk, left fork slider, left disc and axle had been bent in the impact. Strangely enough the screen was the only other thing to be broken apart from the levers. Not even the exhaust had a scratch on it.
It was clear that I wasn’t going out in the second race and this wasn’t going to do my championship points any good.
Luckily, we managed to borrow a whole front end, and we spent the whole evening swapping over the forks and yolk.
We found it really difficult trying to start the bike after it was rebuilt and it was Neil that found out that the carbs had come out at one end of the engine, due to the impact of the crash.....there must have been some forces at work there!
It was a real pity for Neil, after all the work he had with my bike, as Graeme came off in the second race. So that was him out of it and it proved to be an early close to his weekend, as he had badly bruised his hand.
By the end of the evening we were so tired, we weren’t much up for the party in the beer tent, even with the excellent band that were on. We were just so tired.
A load of guys from the bike club had arrived though and were compensating very well for our lack of drinking. Apparently the party went on well into the morning.
SUNDAY
I went out in practice to scrub in the new tyres I got for the bike and check the front end out. It had Maxton stickers on the fork legs, but who knows what was inside.
As it turned out, it was perfectly good and that boosted my confidence.
Race 1:
My start was not really so good and I was in about 10th out of the first corner. I quickly got up to 7th or 8th and began to pick people off as I worked my way through the pack. I had an excellent dice with Rab Davie (just back from the Manx GP) and finally got past him and made it stick as we came out of Snake. There wasn’t much room as he moved over to the left I stuck with him on his left and had to use the white line at the edge of the track to pass him.
After this I had to fend off a couple of challenges and finished in 4th. Under the circumstances I was very happy with that.
Race 2:
My start was quite good here and I was in third by the end of lap 1. Throughout the race though I felt that I was braking too soon and taking ages to turn into the corners. This must have been right as two bikes at Railway passed me. I really had to fight hard throughout the race and just felt it was such hard work. I finished 6th.
Neil asked me if there was something wrong with the bike, but I was too concerned about my braking and turning, to think about any small misfire.
Neil had the tank off though and was looking. As he suspected, there was something wrong; two of the accelerator pumps had also become dislodged from the pistons during my get off on the Saturday, so I wasn’t getting any initial boost off the line or out of the corners.
Race 3:
Back to my old self, I got a good start going into 4th or 5th off the line. I worked my way past the first two guys within the first lap and got up to 2nd by lap 4. I felt back to how I should have been, everything flowing and my braking and turning becoming much quicker and better timed. The next 4 laps saw me close in on the No1 guy, I just didn’t have enough laps to get within striking distance. BUT I definitely felt I was back to normal.
It was a great feeling coming round on the cool down lap. As I turned into the Esses, there were about thirty people jumping up and down at the exit shouting. They were all back at the pits when I got back: The crowd from the Blind Beggar, The Saddle Tramps, Rab & Linda, and everyone else who had come. It was a fantastic feeling.
As I sat on the bike, Graeme came out with a No.1 Number and stuck it on the front of the bike.....I had won the Melville Club Championship (my first Championship win!!!)
So the team is off to the Club dance in February to pick up the “big one” trophy.
Duncan