Magny Cours Race Report

Arrived at Magny Cours Friday morning, before the first free practise at 10:45. The weather was pretty dodgy with thick clouds seperated with sunny intervals, and a westerly wind blowing across the pits, so I only bought one practise session in the morning as the second practise for my category was at the end of the day.

The bike was still feeling fairly flat, with not much below 7.5K, although significant punch after. Magny Cours has 3 sets of chicanes which can be taken progressively faster as you get used to the speed of the circuit. The slowest chicane is at the "complex du Lycee" leading onto the start/finish straight and this area is often the place for last minute overtakes with interesting results as the kerbs are quite high at this area. I really like the "grande Courbe" followed by "Estoril" where, from the start finish straight  you can take as much speed as you can handle into Grande Courbe and then flip over to your right hand to take "Estoril" as fast as your balls (and your rear tyre grip) will allow. I love that sensation of full out leaning whilst travelling at a fast pace. Just to add some spice there is a bump in the middle of "Estoril" which I use as a marker for full throttle, but it can de-stabalise the bike a little, which drifts the bike out towards the edge of the track - this happened to me a couple of times, but luckily the painted areas were quite grippy in the dry at least.

The bike ran well in the first session and my times started to come down to last years pace.

Cleaned off the bike during the afternoon, as there is a bit of petroil mix coming from some where which is liberally covering the engine - I am not sure if it is coming from the carb area or unburnt mixture from leaky exhaust manifolds. I also changed my rear sprocket to a 39 tooth (up from 38), as I was only really using 6th at the very end of the long straight.

As the weather stayed clement I bought a second session at the end of the day, which went pretty well again, and I finished the session by a plug chop cutting the ignition at the end of the last lap and rolling back into the pits - Libby pushed me downhill back to our installation. The plugs looked a bit light (difficult to tell with SP98) but hey, I thought it was worth jetting up a little, especially as the weather forecast for Saturday was cooler, I just managed to finish the left side carbs (going up to 240 rear and 230 front), and the heavens opened, and we had to get the bike under cover to finish the right hand side carbs.

We had dinner with the bikes sharing our space under the tent, and keeping our feet off the ground as the water poured through the car park.

Saturday morning we had timed practise, and we awoke to rain on the windows of our bedroom (the van windscreen!). Cold and wet - typical English conditions - all the French guys think I should go well in the wet, but I hate it, plus I don't have any wet tyres..... Anyway the weather cleared a little for our session, and with a strong wind the track was dry, I managed a 2:09 in timed practise which put me in the middle of the grid. The grid is full as Magny-Cours is a popular circuit, so there were over 50 bikes in practise with 44 taking place on the final grid. Jetting up had made a considerable difference to the bike, it was fuller as it came on pipe and it reved out cleaner, so that was a good move.

The rest of the day, alternated between rain and sun, with the track drying out occasionally. Sunday forecast was for cloud and sun but no rain!

Race 1
I got an OK start from the 7th line, but with a long straight before the first bend I still had the big four strokes coming past on all sides, after the first time around "Estoril" and then the long straight towards "Adelaide" spread out the pack and I found myself fighting with a Kawa ZXR750 and a GSXR, where they definately had me on the longer straights, but I could make up time with higher corner speeds and more bottle on the fast bends. Eventually the Kawa got the better of me, and he was off, and then I spent the final laps battling it out with No. 71, finally getting past him under braking at the "Chateau d'Eau", fully expecting him to come straight back past under acceleration, but he waited until the right hand, right angle bend at the "lycee" to try and out brake me, he came past really too late, and over shot his bend, and I tucked in inside and got back past him, and then the final chicane on the straight, with the flag 100 metres further up, I managed to stay in front! Good race. My best lap was a 2:08 on the second to last lap! The race was won by an 851 Ducati with a best time of 1:54 - phew....

Race 2

I got a really crap start, the bike bogged a little, and I got stuck behind a slower guy at "Estoril", I got past a load of guys at the next few bends, and basically at the end of the lap I was back behind No. 71again! Fortunately I was on a roll and managed to take him almost immediately, and make my way to the next group, I was really pulling out all the stops to reach the guy in front, and I managed to put in a best lap of 2:05.7, so I was pushing my limit, however despite him making a few errors I was never in a position to get past. I did however find some areas where I improved my speed a lot, and there are still some seconds to come off my time! I finished 23rd - a fair way down, but I had a good time!

Thanks to my pit crew (Libby) for her support during the weekend!