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BRITISH SUPERMONO CHAMPIONSHIP ROUNDS 1 & 2 APRIL 3rd & 4th 2004
Motorcycle Mayhem…
Finally the season has arrived!!!
Our first venture for 2004 was to Pembrey in deepest South Wales for the first ACU Supermono round. Mark had spent many late very nights in the garage giving the Rampisham Garage ‘mono’ a makeover. This was a racer that had definitely slimmed down over the Xmas break.
We arrived at the circuit late Friday evening and set up “home” for the weekend. Even in the dark everyone agreed what a fantastic job mark had done with the Rotax. However as Saturday dawned it became clear all was not well, a simple job of fitting new rear brake pads had been left until we got to the track but as these things go luck was not on Marks side, the brake wouldn’t bleed up and some mods were made to finally get it working. He made a mad dash to scrutineering just in the nick of time as the Supermono qualifying session was the next class to go out, the bike passed and so we bundled Mark onto the bike and wished him luck – to everyone’s despair the poor bike only did 50 yards and the promising new Rotax engine seized solid.
Much swearing and cursing ensued, however Brian Wyles who owns the Rampisham Garage “mono” made a phone call to fellow racer Sally Harmer who lives near by to see if she would be able to loan mark a bike for the weekend, unfortunately Sally had no bikes prepared to race but offered the services of her other half Rodger to get her Suzuki DR 800 ready for Sunday.
During Saturday it started to rain heavily and the first Supermono round was held in the pouring rain, which unfortunately really suits Mark, but he had to watch from the sidelines for a change. It rained so hard in the afternoon that the later races had to be postponed until the Sunday morning. By early evening the whole site was under two inches of water and everyone was soaked. Sally arrived at 10:30pm and had to wheel out her pride and joy that she had spent her day off preparing and leave it in an awning that was by now submerged, even the scaffolding plank “stepping stones” needed to get to the van were floating in the awning!!!! Words could not describe how grateful we all were to Sally for the loan of her bike.
Mark took the Suzuki out for a brief practice session on Sunday morning but needed to make some suspension changes to make the bike turn better, fortunately he was allowed to go out on a warm up lap behind the 400 race grid to at least do 1 lap and make sure the changes were somewhere near. With the rain managing to hold off for the Supermono race, it was straight onto the grid after lunch. Due to not being able to qualify the previous day Mark had to start from the back of the grid. A big wheelie off the line and an impressive run down the outside of the pack, getting past as many riders as possible before the first corner led to a fairly uneventful 15 lap race from Mark who worked his way through the pack until he found himself unable to make any ground on the riders and saw him finish in 6th place in the Aircooled class. A slightly disappointing result by his usual standard, however he managed to improved his lap times throughout the race and after the run of bad luck over the weekend everyone agreed he had done well on an unfamiliar bike.
Although disappointed Mark agreed that the run had blown away the cobwebs and he was raring to go at the next challenge – The Production 600 TT.
Words by Charlene Castle
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