Croix-en-Ternois

Our first visit to C-en-T this year, but not the last. We traveled up half way to Troyes accompanied by Chris, who was hitching a lift back to England, on the back of my Dad's bike, from C-en-T. My Dad and Uncle Phil came down (as last year) to watch the racing.

I had been intending to participate in both series of racing this weekend - the Unlimited series with the 350 and the Post Unlimited's with the 500, however first practice on the Friday afternoon with the 500, still showed up the popping farting issue on no. 3, after changing the spark plug the issue seemed to disappear, but kept returning after 10 or so minutes. After much scratching of heads, and troubleshooting(we removed the rear cylinder head, we checked out the rotary disk (twice)) what I now reckon, or hope, is that the bike is running really too rich, and this is causing the plugs fail - why this should only happen in Nr.3 is a mystery, but this issue stopped my racing the 500 this weekend, so luckily the 350 was in good form - or was it!

Chris and I checked over the 350, as the last time it was raced was at the endurance in Carole. I had given it a cursory look over at home, but I didn't spot that the fairing bracket was cracked quite badly. We cut up a couple of pieces of steel plate, and attached it to the fairing bracket to give it some strength - a bit like a splint, this in fact held the whole weekend even though the bracket did give up completely relying on the splint to hold the thing together.

With the 350 I was doing 1:05's (best time 1:05:214) pretty consistently which was enough to give me my first ever front row start (in 4th), which I didn't manage to hold during the race, finishing in a none the less pleasing 5th place. I managed to wheelie off the line which immediately lost me a number of places, so I was pleased to be able to finish in 5th.

The second race on the Sunday I started from the 2nd row in 5th place, and got a slightly better start although my rear tyre was definitely showing signs of wear as the back end stepped out a couple of times and once I nearly lost it at the hairpin (bend 1). I spent most of the race on my own chasing down a Z750, which I managed to catch on the second to last lap. I was however only able to pass him at the hairpin before the long straight, so on the last lap I took the inside line and got through, only to be caught up on the straight before the chequered flag - I took 6th position.

A long drive home, and this time we actually remembered to pick up Libby's car from the car park where we had left it on Thursday evening.

Thanks to Chris and Libby for helping me in multiple technical interventions on the Suzuki, and for Dad and Phil taking the trouble to come down and watch. And believe it or not, but despite a cold weather forecast we didn't see rain all weekend, whilst at home it was raining all the time - photos and video to follow.