Le Mans

Sorry it's been a long time since an update - I know how you miss my tales from the track!

Well this weekend we "did" Le Mans - FANTASTIC! We were four to travel up to Le Mans on Friday morning as both the kids decided to come aswell as Libby. The trip was OK, although long we only arrived at the track 40 minutes before practise, so as normal it was panic stations to get the bike out, leather up and get it started!! The bike is becoming a notorious traveller - it never wants to start after a trip in the trailer! This time it was missing some 12 volts. Don't ask me why but the battery seemed dead. The only reason I can think of is that someone must have left the ignition on and drained the battery during the trip....Anyway a quick bump start and out to discover the historical Le Mans Bugatti circuit. For some of you, who watch too much telly, this is not the 24 hour circuit that the cars take, this is the short track area which does make up part of the 24 hour circuit, but does not take any of the public roads, as does the official 24 hour track. All the same the start finish straight is a top speed (10k rpm in 6th - for me) straight with a nasty right hand curve in it, which lightened up the steering considerably and made for some "white knuckle" moments as you hang on round the curve. This is followed by a left right chicane, with the initial left hander being a common place for a straight-on, as you try to outbrake your mates! After the chicane it hard acceleration downhill towards "La Chapelle: a sweeping off camber right hander which really was a case of "go as fast as your courage will let you...", down a small straight and a left hander (La Musee), follwed by a nice double right hander and then along the back straight towards another chicane (left , right again), along to a nice right hander followed by another left, then down to the final double right to rejoin the start finish straight.

My favourite parts of the circuit, and where I felt the best, were basically in all the right hand bends... Strange really I have nothing against left handers in general, but all the left handers were not my fatest areas! The Friday practise went well, no problems.

Official timed practise wasn't until Saturday afternoon, so we had lots of time to take in the other races and practise sessions from the promosport series. The quickest guys were lapping in 1 minute 45 seconds (Yamaha R1, GSXR 1000 etc..).

My best lap in timed practise was ..... 2 minutes 20 seconds! This put me on line 6 of the grid - 24th position out of the total grid of 40 bikes - not bad. I was in front of some much bigger bikes, so fairly happy. Saturday night was party night with the "Arnold" families - 3 brothers and friends, wives etc.. made a great group, and we finally went to bed around midnight, whilst another group were going for a walk around the circuit (which didn't happen as it was closed).

Race 1
I got a bad start, and a couple of people went past, as we raced up to the first corner, everyone was through, and after a lap or two I found myself in a group of 5 bikes :- another RD 350, a Kawa 250, a Z650, and a Honda 750. Surprisingly the 250 had great top end, and managed to take us all on the straights but took a long time to wind up, which gave us the opportunity to get some space. He overcooked it up the start finish straight and lost the front end trying to turn in on the dirty part of the track - a nasty fall, which finished at the hospital (broken collar bone), meanwhile in a faster group Patrice Guilhemjouan had gone down in "La Chapelle", which looked nasty judging by the scrape marks. Our group of 4 continued to battle it out, swapping places regularly until Philippe Desmarais on the Z650 got a good lead and dropped us, leaving me, the other 350 and the Honda 750, who could easily out gun us on the straights but we were certainly quicker in the bends. The race finished with me behind the 750, and the other 350 behind me...Phew... I finished 23rd (scratch) in the first final. This was really my first taste of hard racing, with bikes everywhere, a fantastic if somewhat chaotic experience!!

Race 2
Some technical problems, and drop outs left me starting further up the grid, next to the same trouble makers as the last time - should be a close race!! My start was better, and I managed to slipstream up the start finish straight, behind a quicker bike, and after the initial first bend tustles, I found myself with the other RD 350 pilot, we proceeded to do 10 laps with him in front for one lap, then I overtook, then he came back, for 4 laps, in the end I managed to keep him back for the last 3 laps, and finished a decent 19th position (scratch). I was pretty happy as we had managed to pull ourselves in front of some quicker guys, because we were really pulling all the stops out!! The other 2 guys we had battled with in the first race both had some technical issues which prevented them from getting to us.

Results
I managed to get some great points during the weekend and finished up 8th in my category with 13 points! I was really chuffed with the result, because not only can I see progress in my technique(!) but also I am gradually moving up the places, I only hope I can keep going at the next venue in 3 weeks time!

In the photos you can see the five way battle in the first race, and me taking the chequered flag!