Cartagena Test 2009
February for 5 days in the sun to get to know the Honda RS125 that I'll be racing in the Relentless GP125 British Championship.
Honda RS125
is being provided by Kinpac Racing.
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Niall's Blog
BSB, Brands Hatch, 10/11/12/13 April 2009
After a confidence boosting meeting at Knockhill we made the long trek down to Brands Hatch for the first round of the BSB Relentless 125GP Championship. Team Kinpac set up camp on the Thursday morning but due to Dad’s work commitments we travelled down on the Thursday evening. We stopped off at Dartford because of the 10pm curfew at Brands.
So it was an early rise on Friday morning and we arrived at the track just before 8am. We got through the sign on formalities reasonably quickly and met up with Peter, George and Matt just before 9am. Friday’s test session turned out to be a challenge to say the least. We started off with the Knockhill settings but the detonation counter was going mental so I pulled in after 2 laps. We changed the ignition map settings but that didn’t really improve things so I came back to the pits after a total of 4 laps. It was decided that I should not go out for the remainder of the session so that we didn’t damage the piston. Session 2 wasn’t much better. We replaced the spare barrel with our quickest barrel but I only managed 3 laps before suffering the same problem we had at Knockhill. The studs managed to unscrew themselves!
Back to the spare barrel and we managed to complete 20 laps in the first official free practice. The Honda was running a bit flat for some reason and my top speed on the start/finish straight was 10mph down on the quicker machines. We tried some different settings through qualifying but couldn’t get the little Honda to perform. After some analysis and discussion with the team we decided to make some changes for morning warm up which seemed to do the trick. We decided to stick with these settings for the race and all we did to the bike before the race was to refuel, fit new slicks and carry out a nut and bolt check.
I was now confident and looking for a top twenty finish in the race. However, during the sighting lap I new that something was amiss. The Honda didn’t want to know anything above 7000rpm. I set off for the two warm up laps but the safety car passed me before I got to Druids. Gutted! I pulled in at the Marshall’s post and watched the rest of the race which was won by Martin Glossop. Hopefully the problem can be fixed before next weekend as I have an entry for the Wirral100 meeting at Oulton Park.
See ya.
Niall
