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, Knockhill, 3/4/5 July 2009
The Team booked Teeside Autodrome for the day so that we could get some much needed practice before our home round at Knockhill. Everything was going reasonably well and I made some suspension changes to get a feel for different set ups. My lap times were coming down and I was happy with the bike. Then a racer's worst possible nightmare...no front brake! I was going down the back straight and I noticed a small object fly past my helmet.
It must be a racer's sixth sense because I sat up early for the fast sweeping bend at the end of the straight. I reached for the front brake but it was already at the handle bar. I thought bugger, this isn't good. Instinctively I baled off the side of the bike and slid down the track while the bike carried on its merry way towards the tyre wall. I lost sight of the bike as the world turned upside down for a while as I bounced over the kerb and into the gravel trap. A quick check to see if everything was still moving and I got up onto my feet. Dad and the rest of the team were already on their way over. Miraculously I was completely unscathed considering the data logger showed that I jumped off the bike at 163km/hr.
The bike on the other hand smacked the barrier quite hard and needed a full set of plastics, two handle bars, a footrest and it turned out the rear wheel was buckled. It was quite a rush to get the bike ready for Knockhill and a big thanks to Tom Paulo for lending me a wheel while mine was getting repaired at Dave East Engineering. The crash was due to the brake lever bolt retaining clip vibrating off and it was the bolt that flew past my helmet. It wasn't lock wired after my crash at Snetterton which turned out to be a costly mistake.
Shaken but not stirred I was back to free practice and qualifying a few days later at Knockhill. The bike was running reasonably well but I couldn't get my lap times below 1.57s which isn't good enough at British Championship level. I qualified 28th on the grid and had a fairly lonely and uneventful race to finish in 25th place.
See ya.
Niall
