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, Croft, 11/12/13 Sep 2009
Croft is about as local as it gets for us with the exception of Knockhill. Croft is about a 3 hour drive down the M6 and then across the A66 to Scotch Corner. We arrived at the paddock just before 8pm on the Thursday and managed to squeeze the van and pop-up awning into the space reserved for us beside the Kinpac truck. We were located a fair distance from pit lane so it was fortunate that Stephen came to help out this weekend. An extra pair of hands really makes the difference as there is so much to do between sessions.
The weather forecast was good again so we didn’t need to worry about wets for the weekend. Dad collected our Wrathall barrel from Darren at RCS who had repaired a loose stud. We had a bit of time before first practice so Dad went to work on the bike and swapped the barrels. Things didn’t go quite to plan and one of the other cylinder head nuts didn’t torque up to the required 10nm. However, Dad then hand tightened the nut and thought it would hold.
First practice eventually got underway but I only lasted two laps….you guessed it, the cylinder head started leaking water. Not a good start for us by losing the session as I could really do with laps under my belt. We ran our spare barrel for the second session but it didn’t have as much power and I was languishing at the bottom of the speed traps. We borrowed a barrel from Tom Paulo for the qualifying sessions and although there was an improvement we were still a fair bit down on top speed. I qualified 33rd on the grid but I was determined to try my best despite the bike’s lack of speed.
I got a reasonable start in the race and stayed with the pack for the first few laps and then started to drop back. I ended up having a good race with Elliot Lodge in the final stages of the race until he crashed out without injury on the last lap. We are at a loss with what to do at this stage of the season as everything we have tried to improve the performance of the Honda has not really worked. We have been offered the use of a Luyten kit for the next round at Silverstone so hopefully that may provide some answers.
See ya.
Niall
