Well a good first day on the Isle of Man. Things started going well, when on Friday my laptop arrived back from Dell with a new motherboard, so I was able to bring it to the TT races. TOP SERVICE from DELL. I cannot recommend them highly enough. They arranged for it to be collected on Wednesday, and it was back FIXED on Friday. Fantastic. So I am amble to write my reports from the Island.
Well we arrived on the ferry at 6.30 am, tired and disappointed with the weather. Rain and mist and no sign of it clearing, so evening practice looked doubtful, let alone anything else. We arrived at our rented house and emptied the van, then went to sign on. The weather started looking better and everyone started getting excited. Roll on the afternoon and the sun was out, that’s the Isle of Man for you some very strange weather patterns. We prepped the 600 bike and the F1 bike as best we could. The 600 was taken though scruteneering, followed by the F1 bike. The sun was well and truly out at this point and it was t-shirt weather, hooray. The roads were closed at 6 pm with first practice at 6.15 for the smaller bikes and we were going to run the 600 for 2 laps, followed by the F1 bike for 2 laps. The pits opened and everyone made their way out to watch Adrian Archibald and Bruce Anstey the 2 Tas riders head the field for the first practice session of the 04 races.
Dave was out in about 22nd place off the start for a few steady laps to reacquaint himself with the circuit. About 20 ish minutes later, he came flying past the pits on his second lap. He seemed to be enjoying himself…….at the end of the next lap he came in, as it was the end of the session. He was grinning from ear to ear, saying the 600 is almost set perfect, just some minor suspension adjustments to make, but otherwise he felt he was quickly on the pace. Then came the time for a lap on the F1 bike. After all the problems we had last year, we were all nervous about Dave’s first lap on the big GSXR. He flew out of the pits behind John McGuiness on his new factory Yamaha. We all wondered how he would do and whether we had sorted the handling problems on the bike. We had adjusted the suspension earlier in the day as best we could, so it was a wait and see situation. The F1 bike with its new Micron Serpent System exhaust now makes 175 rear wheel horsepower and 99 lb/ft of torque. It makes 66 lb/ft of torque at 3500 rpm…. It’s a strong beast…
Dave came in after just the one lap, looking fairly pleased with himself. He said the bike is just amazingly ballistically fast, its just so much quicker than the 600, its unbelievable, but the suspension is still not right. The rear is too hard and the front too soft. We are sure we can dial out these problems tomorrow, but we shall wait and see.
I ma enclosed some pics of the bikes after today’s practice, I will post more tomorrow. We don’t have any times yet from practice, will get those tomorrow as well…
Eric, Dave, Simon and Stivi, the 4 members of the team for 04.
cannot upload any pics yet, but working on it...
