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The 12th round of the championship was held at the EMRA meeting on 24th August. This attracted an entry of 18 initially but Alec Gilfillan had to cancel due to the problems with his GPZ550 that had kept him out of the Sunday events at the Cadwell meeting on 26/27th July were more deep seated than the bent valves that were immediately obvious. Alec's cancellation was made up for by the late entry of Dick Bradburn on his GS1000. On the Saturday evening the paddock was a bit quieter than usual and most of those who arrived early were able to get scrutineered that night. You didn't even have to go to the scrutineering bay. One very helpful scrutineer was going round the paddock to find bikes to do. I don't know how many he did but when we got up there was no sign of the usual queue. Mind you we did get up a bit later than usual. This one act got rid of one of the few problems at EMRA meetings the wait for scrutineering. We were races 5 and 14 on the programme and it made a change to have the first race before dinner, at 12.22. When it got underway it was Nigel Lawrence and Andy Jackson who got clear of the field. Nigel was once again running his big bore kit. The first time he used it, it leaked oil like Rob Eley's GSX. In practice it was once again showing signs of an external lubrication system and a fair bit of work was done after practice to try and make it oil tight. That's one problem with an early race number, not as much time to sort any problems that might appear in practice. As it turned out, he had solved the problem more or less, and led Andy across the line by just over a second. Both had race times under six minutes the first to do so but Nigel took the new race record to 5.58.64. Andy meanwhile took the new lap record with a time of 58.88 sec. Clive Wadey took third and he was ahead of the RD 400 of Adrian Sanders. In taking fourth overall, Adrian took over 7 seconds off the 500 race record with a time of 6.20.50, less than half a second behind him was Mostyn Bullock. Glenn Graham was next to finish, 0.3 seconds ahead of Cass. Just behind these RD400's were the first of the 750 class machines, the XJ550s of Mel Coote and Pete Boyles, with Mel taking the class win by less than a second. Tony Smith was the next finisher ahead of Malcolm Price both on GPZ750's. Dick Bradburn was the next finisher on his GS1000 ahead of the Laverda of Mike Annesley. This time Mike had no problems getting the Laverda scrutineered. They never even questioned the lack of catch tray. Phil Underwood was next to finish on his GT500 despite a problem with the front brake. In practice the front brake didn't seem quite right and on inspection the pads wore found, how shall I put it, to be below the manufacturer's recommended wear limit. No problem, it only takes a few minutes to change the pads for the spare set he had when he started racing the GT in 1999. Now where were they? Well the one place they weren't was anywhere near Mallory Park. Now not surprisingly he couldn't find anyone selling GT500 pads in the paddock so the front brake would have to be used sparingly i.e. in emergency only. Good job the GT has a good back brake. Pete Scott, RD400, finished behind Phil and he was in turn ahead of the Morini of Howard Friend who finished in front of the GSX1100 of Dave Gibbs. The last finisher was Colin Young, whose X7 definitely wasn't running at all well. Colin didn't actually show on the results but he definitely did finish as I watched him cross the line. Colin's X7 is usually reliable, but then again he had put both it and his spare bike up for sale that morning. Race two got underway at 3.15 and everyone got out for the sighting lap as Colin appeared to have sorted the fuel starvation problems he had found. Not all however made it to the start of the warm up lap as Andy Jackson was missing. At first it was assumed he had struck mechanical problems but it was worse than that as he had somehow fallen off at the bus stop. Rob Eley (not me) reckons, that Andy pulled a monster wheelie away from the hairpin and hadn't quite got it all back together by the time it was time to turn into the Bus Stop. He and the GS1000 hit the barriers across the track with Andy almost ending up underneath them. Rob reckons he then tried to hide under them until everyone had gone home. Colin Young then had to pull out as he clearly hadn't solved the problems. Afterwards he was annoyed he hadn't taken the spare bike out. With Andy out of contention, Nigel wasn't seriously troubled and did just enough to keep Clive Wadey at bay. Adrian Sanders took third taking 0.04 sec' off the class race time. Adrian took third at late notice after chasing Glenn Graham for most of the race and to be frank not obviously making much of an impression on him but more of that in a bit. Mostyn took fourth and then behind him were five machines covered by less than a second. Four of these were involved in a race long scrap while Glenn who finished at the back of this group had been well clear until the last lap. The actual finishing order was Pete Boyles, Mel Coote, Tony Smith, Cass and then Glenn Graham. On the approach to the hairpin on the last lap, Glenn and Mostyn had a coming together which ended up with him going onto the grass. He kept it upright but he lost a fair bit of time and although he still got through the bus stop ahead of Cass she just got by on the exit of Devils Elbow. Malcolm Price was the next to finish, ahead of Dick Bradburn and Mike Annesley. Mike was followed home by Phil Underwood, who was in turn ahead of Howard Friend and Dave Gibbs. Pete Scott failed to finish after running wide onto the grass on the exit of Gerrards and doing the rest of Stebbe Straight on the grass. Now last year he might have got it back together by the old Lake Esses but he soon found himself rapidly reaching the point where he had to make a difficult decision. Should he bail out or risk T boning someone turning left into Edwina's. By now the world had gone into slow motion and after careful consideration he decided that long term it might be better to bail out. He couldn't bank on anyone he might take out being either smaller than him or not being able to run as fast as he could. With the entry we got we ended up with the 250LC class on the back of our grid. Several have asked why we have to have them on the back of the grid and the answer is simple. We didn't get a big enough entry to stop them being put there. No club can run a race with 19 bikes on the grid and then another race with 8 bikes when you can fit them all on one grid. It has also been asked why YPVS 350s and even this time a TZ350 run in the 250LC class. All I can say is that it is up to EMRA what they let out with the LCs as non championship eligible machines. I can understand those who aren't particularly happy with LCs and more to a point non championship machines on occasions influencing the outcome of certain class results. The problem is that the YPVSs are very close as regards lap times to the 500 and 750 class machines and get mixed in with them. For the next EMRA meeting, we will ask if they could do a split start. The LCs etc will still catch some of ours but when they do they should be able to get past quite easily. The combination of the LCs and us did cause a bit of a delay while they sorted the results out especially the second race. In addition to the five Earlystocks machines that finished within 0.8 sec, there were at least two LC/YPVS mixed in between Cass and Howard who finished 1.5 sec behind her but a lap down. There was also an LC just behind him. There were at least 8 bikes of various classes finishing in only a two second period and with quite a number of position changes in the last 20 yards, it took some sorting out. As it turned out when the initial results were posted Glenn Graham was missing from the results, had he done a 'Nigel' at the Hairpin. It was soon established that the results were wrong and they were amended. After the race, Andy Jackson did come back to the paddock but had to go to the headmasters office. How he got away with a severe warning rather than a fine is one of those mysteries that will never be solved. Mind you, I still don't think it beat his first lap accident at Anglesey a couple of years ago. Steve Bailey. |