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.
The Story So Far...
Stuff from Superteens, Metrakit and Minimotos.
Niall's Blog
BSB, Cadwell Park, 29/30/31 Aug 2009
It seems as if no time has passed at all and we’re already into the final third of the season. Round 9 of the Relentless British 125GP championship took us to picturesque Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire. Cadwell has just about everything, uphill, downhill, a tight and twisty woodland section and the flat out run towards Park corner, not to mention the mountain which is quite spectacular even on a 125.
The weekend didn’t start off too well as my chain came off in the first free practice session after only 8 laps. The next session was much better and I stayed out on track for the full 20min session. I was hoping to improve my times significantly in qualifying but I could only shave off 0.8s in the first session and my exhaust pipe snapped during the second so I ended up on the final row of the grid. There were spits of rain appearing at the start of Q2 and most riders called it a day so my split exhaust didn’t really matter in the end. I seem to get up to a certain speed during free practice but can’t find a way of consistently reducing my lap times. Must try harder! Apart from the slight shower during Q2 the weather was fantastic during the weekend and I was looking forward to race day.
There was some fun and frolics on Saturday night with the annual bicycle race in aid of the Chris Jones Riders Fund. Not sure who won the race but it was fun to watch with the participants being pelted with water bombs from the side of the track. Morning warm up was ok and it was time to relax and prepare for the race. Dad decided to check the piston as we had run a leaner main jet during warm up. The piston was ok but disaster struck as Dad was torquing up the cylinder head when one of the cylinder studs came loose. We only had one spare cylinder with us, but it had not been used since it suffered the same problem at the beginning of the season. The studs had been repaired but we had never tested the cylinder in a race. There was no option but to try it and see. We warmed the bike up on the stand and everything looked ok.
The race got underway and I immediately noticed that the bike didn’t feel as strong as it should. I was really struggling to keep with the pack in front when the race was red flagged due to a nasty looking crash involving Ed Rendell on the start/finish straight. I rolled into pit lane but it was the end of the race for me as water was leaking out of the cylinder head. It was very disappointing for the whole team as Pete opted not to race the Aprilia due to machine problems that dogged him all weekend. Never mind, I’ll need to try and find some fairy dust to sprinkle over the bikes before the next meeting at Croft in 2 weeks’s time.
See ya.
Niall
