We had problems all weekend with the bike at Donnington, and generally it was a complete nightmare of a weekend!
We were warming the bike up ready to go out for free practice 1 when my BPS System on my bike was showing that the bike was getting around 2000 dets per rev or so! We turned the bike off straight away, but knew that this is impossible as we wasnt running the bike lean at all.
After fiddling around with the wires for five minutes or so I decided just to go out and see what happens, the bike didnt blow up in the end, although it was very slugish, but one weird thing was that for the first 3 laps I was out there for the BPS System was completely not working! It was just a blank screen.
We gathered that we was going to have a few problems with this BPS as we had only just bought it and fitted it to the bike, but did not think we was going to have this much trouble considering this BPS is around the £2000 mark and since we had bout it from a “top team” then we thought it would be quite a sensible idea to buy it of them, but it turned out to be the complete opposite.
By the time our free practice 2 session had came around the heavens above had opened up and the track was very wet, I decided to go out as I needed to know what Donnington was like in the wet as I had heard it was very slippy indeed when it came to being a wet track.
I found myself toodling round the very slippy track with a group of other riders, I had completed about a quarter of the session when I binned it down at the old hairpin and in doing so completely trashed the bike good and proper.
The boys spent all night repairing the bugger and they had it ready by the morning ready for qualifying. To everyones disbelief I actually smashed it up all over again at exactly the same corner, except this time the damage was not as bad! My confiedents had taken quite a blow but I was ready to face the blooming track and my bike again. I went out knowing that I had to improve my times by quite a margin, fast! Otherwise I was in jeperdy of not qualifying.
I didnt manage to smash the bike up this time and we both came home all all in one piece, my times droped enough for my to qualify, not last! Which was a big relief. Race day came and to my surprise the weather had got better, I went out for morning warm up, checked the bike was all ok, there was a few crashes but not me!
We all lined up on the grid ready for the lights to go out, they eventually did and I got a brilliant start, I went through the row in front of me and was in around the mid 20s possition wise, there were a couple of fallers on the first lap but apart from that all systems were go!
I was in a group of about 4-5 riders that I usualy beat with ease, I think this was mainly down to how much of a slug my bike turned out to be even though my poor dad and a couple of mates spent ages cleaning her up, prepairing it and buying new bits in preporation before we took off for Donnington, but it was all for nothing! On the last few laps my bike start to loose power and cut out, this was very anoiying as I would loose so much time on the group I was with and they would often put a gap on me, On the last lap I passed a rider, she went wide at the last tern in desperation to get passed me again, I really did think I had her beat, untill my slug bucket bike cut out down the start finish line as we went accross the line and she came cruising passed me, I was in such a mood that I punched my screen and smashed that to nothing in frustration, I was not impressed with myself, nor my bikes performance at all!
At the end of the day I knew my bike was down on power, but not to the exstent of 38bhp which my dad owned up and told me about at the end of the day! Usualy on a genuine day my bike would be at about 45 bhp, 7 bhp makes a lot of difference when it comes to dinger 2- strokes believe me!
I would like to say a massive thankyou Leyford construction for the help and support with sponsoring me on the later half of this season, thankyou
I would also like to say thankyou to my dad, alan Harland and shaun Atkine for their help and efforts over the disasterous weekend too, thanks lads.
Tags: Aprillia, 125cc, Jess+Trayler, racing, motorcycle
