Actrix VMCC Superbike Championship 25 May 2008

The Moto Academy NZ riders had decided at the last event that they wanted to have additional track time, so we decided to attend the testing day prior to Round 3 of the Actrix/VMCC Superbike Championships at Manfield Park. On this same day Moto Academy NZ took delivery of its 5^th Honda RS125 motorcycle, thanks to Graeme and Rosanna Cole for bringing it down and of a spare engine, thanks go to Greg Percival and Sloan Frost for getting it to me. I really appreciate it guys, thanks! You will see later what life savers these all were.

Friday 18 July was a cold and damp day with little prospect of it warming, clearing or drying. After setting up the garage and readying the bikes, the riders (with the exception of Sam who had decided to sit out the day and help around the garage instead) headed out onto the track. Glen was running in the new motor on the 250 and getting time on the bike. Luke and Kyle were getting time on the bikes and looking to learn about riding in damp and cold conditions. Normally at the best of times this is a poor combination of conditions in which to be trying to race GP bikes, and so it proved.

In the second session Kyle put the ^#13 RS125 down in T6 knocking himself about a little in the process. It seems that he simply opened the throttle too much for that particular piece of tarmc and lost traction in the rear and then lost control. He got back eventually and was not so much the worse for wear, so we set about preparing the spare bike for him to ride. Session two was going along well  with all three bikes running nicely and the riders all seeming to be handling the conditions well. That is until Luke did the same thing as Kyle and landed heavily on his elbow. By this time the 125 riders had decided that discretion was the better part of valour and that one more session for Kyle would be sufficient. However upon attempting to start the bike we discovered that it had no compression. Investigation showed a broken and snagged piston ring. Bugger! Prior to the third session Glen and I had decided to lean up the jets on the 250 to what I thought would be safe settings, but that was not to be and halfway through the session the engine seized again! Investigation showed detonation on both cylinders with one causing the piston to burn and lightly seize the bore.

So we were now down to one running Moto Academy NZ bike (Sams one that was not being used), the new spare bike not in Moto Academy livery, two crash damaged bikes, one with a broken engine and a seized RS250. We made the decision to swap parts over to the new spare bike to make a good bike. This went smoothly enough with the boys all pitching in to do a job or two. Glen set about swapping out the damaged cylinder and piston for those on the new spare engine, while Steve supervised and got in the way on all these jobs and cleaned up the other damaged bike.

That evening Moto Academy NZ met for the evening tutorial. This tutorial was on the basics of the operation of the 2-stroke racing engine. Then Glen, Andy J and I headed back to my garage to rebuild the 250 and to repair damaged fairings. AJ sorted the fairings while Glen and I polished the cylinders, replaced the pistons, reset the carburettors and replaced the engine ready for the next day of racing.

Saturday therefore dawned wet but surprisingly warm, and Moto Academy NZ had 4 running and presentable RS125s and a running RS250. Sam Fitzgerald from Celtic Leathers bought over all the leathers to which he had fitted riders names and a couple of patches. The rain looked ominous so the riders elected to fit rain tyres, so we set about doing that. By the time qualifying and racing started it had started to bucket down, so we were all happy about the tyre choices. Glen set out and qualified 13^th in Superbike and 6^th in Supersport out of 25-30 riders which were both awesome efforts. In MotoGP125 Sam qualified 2^nd, Luke 3^rd and Kyle 4^th out of the 5 riders. This was an awesome effort by all the boys as none had any really strong experience of rain riding and certainly not on 125GP bikes.

The 250 was now running nice and strongly so we certainly were not touching the engine. Glens races were all awesome with him making the most of the Dunlop MotoGP rain tyres that I had managed to blag off the Kiwi head technician at Dunlop at last years Ozzy MotoGP!  He had his knee down everywhere and was clearly the fastest through all the corners. The first Supersport race was spoiled by the bike cutting out on the last lap due to fuel starvation but otherwise his day was simply sublime with 7^th and 5^th place finishes in Superbike and a 6^th in Supersport. His fastest time of 1min 16.6s was only 1 second or so off the fastest 600cc time!!  Quite an effort.

In 125 race 1 was a very mixed bag. A red flag caused the race to be halted and upon returning to the grid we noticed that a bolt on Sam’s gear shifter was loose. I hurriedly tightened that but Sam was late out of the pit-lane and was made to start from the back of the 125 grid. However this got translated on the ground to; on the front of the Streetstock grid and on the Streetstock lights start! This clearly upset him (and me, I was livid!) and he was let away as the 125’s were leaving T1. He put the hammer down and caught up to almost taking 2^nd place by the end of the race. On the other hand, Kyle was grafting away finding his rhythm while Luke and Jayden Hassan were having a dingle of a battle. At one point Jayden needed to take evasive action away from a back marker which allowed Luke through. Although Jayden caught up again he ran out of fuel on the last straight allowing Luke past once more to take his first victory and the first victory for Moto Academy. While this is not the main focus of the Moto Academy (learning and performing against the riders own standards are the more immediate focus) it certainly felt sweet and it was so great to see Luke and Sams reactions to their performances and is the obvious outcome from improving personal standards. Unfortunately Kyle suffered the ignominy of a machine failure on the last lap when the rear wheel bearing housing collapsed. Not a nice thing to see, but totally unforeseeable. Luckily no other damage occurred.

Race 2 in 125 looked to be a similar battle until we saw Luke pull out of the race with his leg dangling along side the bike. Oh oh I thought, a foot peg has fallen off! Sam went on to give Jayden a race for his money coming out in 2^nd place and Kyle ran to a well earned 3^rd place. After the riders came in we found out that Luke had suffered a cramp attack in his leg and was unable to continue. That was a pity, but he has now learned the hard way about the lessons we gave in Tutorial 2 about maintaining hydration and taking time to relax and focus between races. We will work with Kyle to establish his preferred style and look to get his starts sorted out as he demonstrated at Taupo and at R2 that he has speed but at the moment it is not quite going his way. Bearing in mind also that the bike he was riding was the new spare bike which had a completely different set up in it than the bike he was riding previously.

So overall it was a very trying and expensive weekend with some gear needing repairing and replacing. But the riders all  learned alot from the weekend and the results are already starting to slowly come to us.

I would like to thank Mike Reps and John O'Leary again for all their help and to thank the supporters and suppliers of Moto Academy NZ. Roll on Round 4 23 August.