The race series is held over 5 rounds at Brno and Most (rymes with Frost) in the Czech Republic, and this year, Hungaroring. Teams are made up of between 2 and 4 riders, each of whom ride their own bikes with a single transponder per team which is switched from bike to bike at handovers like a baton in a relay race. 58 teams are allowed to enter each round
, and the start is Le Mans style - ie run across the track, jump on the bike, start it, shut your eyes and go!! All races this year are 4 hours long, with as many handovers as you like. My team are all keen amateurs, primarily in it for fun but also quite keen to do as well as possible. I arrived there after an 8 hour drive from Prague on Saturday night to find that most other riders had been there all day on Saturday doing a trackday and were consequently pretty familiar with the track. Did I mention I have never been there before? Worse still, the company I had ordered tyres from for delivery at the track had screwed up the order, so I was going to have to race on tyres from the previous round. After unloading the bikes and a barbeque in the pits, I slept next to my bike in the pit garage, which was fine.
On Sunday morning I was to have two 25 minute practice sessions to get up-to-speed on the track. Forecast was hot and sunny, no rain. In fact I got a few extra laps because one of my teammates came in from his first session early with a technical hitch, so I went out asap in order not to waste the time. After 4 laps, my best laptime stood at 2'19.xx.
Immediately after that was my first full session, after which my time stood at 2'13.xx and it was obvious that I had geared the bike too tall for the technical section. So I set about swapping the rear sprocket for one 2 teeth bigger - thankfully a quick job on a single-sided swingarm bike like the 996.
In the third session I was able to get my time down to 2'08.8x, which was about as good as I could expect in the time available. The fastest guys were doing 2'02's, but I am a man of limited ability (and funding!), so discretion is often the better part of valour.
My teammate Robert on his 999R did qualifying, and set a great time of 2'02.xx, which was enough to get us 10th place out of the 58 bikes lined up on the pit wall for the start. The fastest qualifying time, set by a semi-pro National standard team was 1'59.xx.... My best practice time would have got us about 26th place. During Qual, the fourth member of our team decided he didn't like the track so would not be taking part in the race. This was good news in a way because it meant that there could be fewer handovers, but with the forecast high of 31C it meant that the remaining three of us would have a hard time physically.
The start was done by Petr on his R1, who did a flawless job and kept it on the island for his allotted 30 minutes. I will post a video link of the start once I figure out how to do it.
Sure enough, conditions were the main battle in the race. Cramp was an ever-present danger for those careless with the fluid and mineral intake, but with a good supply of bananas and Gatorade we thought we had that licked. The bikes were also tending to run hot and boil as they slowly entered pitlane. At the halfway point we were lying 10th overall, and 4th in the unlicensed superbike category - with two of the teams ahead of us on the same lap.
Then we screwed up a handover - the crew missed my attempt to signal my intent to come in the next lap, and as a consequence weren't ready when I rolled up. So I went out for another lap and tried again - a good way to waste 25 or so seconds! Luckily that was long enough to have the next bike and rider ready!
After that, things got on tack again until the penultimate lap, when Robert got cramp which caused him to lose his footing mid-corner, and lowside his lovely 999R on the hairpin entering the front straight. Luckily, neither bike or rider were seriously hurt, so he manfully remounted and finished the race (sans front brake lever and most of his right hand footpeg). Our final position was 14th overall (from 58 teams), and 8th in our class of 30. Not too bad, but of course there's always room for improvement.
Following showers and loading of the vans, we all set sail back to Prague, and I arrived at home at 2:30am on Monday morning, tired and sore but very glad to have sampled Hungary's best track. If anyone here gets a chance to go there too, I recommend you take it!
Will post pics once they're available.
