The First Race of the Season... And I'm not in it

Last weekend I watched the first race of the RGB season at Mallory Park nr Leicester.
It was great to meet all my racing mates again and there was much paddock ribbing from various members of the community about the fact that I had a perfectly good working race car but I've taken it apart ...again!

Which is all fair comment and was taken in good heart!

I was particulary pleased to see the novice racer Buzz who had bought Tim Pell's old Genesis racer bring it home in a Class A third place. Although a bit of mental maths indicated that if I had left the beast alone then that could have been me. Or at least Buzz and I could have been fighting over the podium place!

Hey Ho , Ce'st la Vie!

There was another silver lining to my late arrival in the paddock. Fellow racer Colin Duce has also changed to the CBR1000RR this season and is using an identical sump to the Nova one I have fitted, although in a longitudinal install. Colin has already blown one engine in pre season testing and at Mallory's hairpin his oil pressure was again dangerously low. This prompted much head scratching between Colin, his spanner Man, engine builder Andy Bates and various other members of the CBR1000RR community including me. The upshot of this is that we are all going to fit baffle plates to further control oil surge. Andy thinks that under heavy braking in a north south install all the oil may have disappeared into the clutch housing (it holds over two litres) and no amount of swing in the sump can help it scavenge oil that is actually in the clutch housing

So my late drive shafts may well have saved me blowing an engine by delaying my startup date until these teething problems are sorted. But I do feel very sorry for Andy and Colin over the costs for the blown engine.

The car is still at Tony Law's being exhausted, and I'm still waiting for brake rotors and fuel bits from Demon Tweeks. Unless i get it back together in the next two weeks I'm beginning to wonder if I'll even make the third race of the season at Lydden Hill.

Still I might use the time to finally respray the car in metallic British Racing Green (I've had the paint on the shelf for two years) and get the garage sorted out with some additional storage\tidy.

The other thing I've sorted out recently is some team stickers for all the Cam7 boys who may be out racing this season. The stickers simply say "[Cam7]Racing" which nicely reflects the email subject lines which are a feature of our community\collection of nutters.

I've also got some nice "Driver: Adrian Moore , Mechanic : Duncan Mepham" stickers made up. so it will be nice to have our names on the car at last.