Pirelli RR Series - Phillip Island IMPORTANT INFO

[madog]

weather will be good ,i will be down sunday

[Medic!]

Will be looking forward to some good vids. Good luck

[Marshy]

Faaark me, what a long drive!! After a 12 hour trip, this better be the best fucken racetrack in the world!!

[CLIFFY]

It is one of, for sure.

[tempest]

Faaark me, what a long drive!! After a 12 hour trip, this better be the best fucken racetrack in the world!!

Nic, from the first time you come round t12 and down the straight, then lap after lap... The 12 hrs will seem like 12mins and you will be planning the next trip back before the session is over.
Then there is the other 11 turns each with their own wonders and challenges. To me, it is truly a magical place.
Have fun, stay safe and if you think about backing off the throttle, count to three then do it!

[CLIFFY]

T9 & T10 combo does it for me

[Marshy]

if you think about backing off the throttle, count to three then do it!

Love it!! Thanks mate - I'll be thinking of this all day!

[BoB]

Good luck to all those down at the island , enjoy and safe trip back. Keep us posted on how you go.

[Marshy]

After a 12 hour trip, this better be the best fucken racetrack in the world!!

Lucky....

Faaar out, it's awesome! Very, very fast!

[Team Zero]

Best racetrack in the world ever! A great day racing. New pb's for everyone. A great day all round.

[Marshy]

I've got some great vids! Can't wait to upload them when we get back.

TT races today. 2 x 10 lappers. Plus quali first thing in the morning. Looking to go under 1:40....

[Medic!]

I've got some great vids! Can't wait to upload them when we get back.

TT races today. 2 x 10 lappers. Plus quali first thing in the morning. Looking to go under 1:40....

And seriously......you don't have time to upload them for us?

[Baddie]

No videos yet.

[chubb]

Come on.. slacking off

[Medic!]

Maybe they took a wrong turn and are Shhnow ploughing thru the ski fields.
A mate did it a few years back. Thought he'd discovered a shorter way home lol.

[Marshy]

Working on them!! Should have at least one ready shortly....

[BoB]

Working on them!! Should have at least one ready shortly....

And dont forget the trip report, we want to know how good the racing was...

[Marty]

Maybe they took a wrong turn and are Shhnow ploughing thru the ski fields.
A mate did it a few years back. Thought he'd discovered a shorter way home lol.

Ahaha! They don't salt the road south of threadbo either!

Can't wait to see the videos Nick, I'm dreaming of going to the island

[Saturnalian]

I said i'd throw it up here so......


Well, here we are....

Phillip Island Pirelli road Race Series Round #3

I decided to get away a day early (Wednesday) so i'd have a chance to rest up and relax on the island the day before practice started.
After hoping, dreaming and bingeing on the idea of this for some 5 months i'd decided i needed to be as relaxed about the whole thing as much as possible lest I explode in a haze of black smoke and regret whilst navigating a late afternoon locust plague somewhere in the Goulburn valley.

I had spent a sensible amount of time earlier in the week prepping the van for a 2200 km round trip and was fairly proud of my efforts, and my pack.
Leaving home at 7:00am after sharing breakfast with my son I hit the road and then promptly hit Pennant Hills Rd Carpark.

After a brief stop at Constitution Hill (the Sydney one) to sing the National anthem I still had to venture into Mascot to drop off a bunch of overnight freight (work stuff) before getting underway properly.
Freight done, delivered and sorted I hit the road only to find about 5 minutes later that my phone was no longer with me.

Using the techtrickery of Find my iShit on the iPad I discovered that i had left it at the freight depot somewhere after looking up the contact number of the receiver to write it on the cartons.
U-Turn, back to Mascot. I drive in, looking confused and begin wandering around whistling and calling out to the phone while one of my smarter friends starts calling it and listening out.

I was soon to discover that sometime very shortly after hitting the road my phone had followed suit and after bouncing off the rear step of the transit had landed gently on the tarmac, humming away to itself,
only for me to have driven over the top of it as i returned to the freight depot.

Strangely everything seemed to work fine, the front touchscreen was fine, I could call people and complain about how fucked it was, the back was a mess although it was difficult to take a photo of this to send out with my verbal complaints and OMFG's
and it was starting to resemble a nokia Banana phone from the side view. The 8110 if memory serves me. Piece of shit that thing was.

Back on the road...... and it became apparent that the piece of hardware that also serves as my lap timer and data collection system had everything working, except for the gyro and accelerometer, fairly necessary tools in the data collection game.
It was also getting very warm whenever i plugged it in. With a shrug of the shoulders i dialled in some of my Banarama faves and set off yet again.
In the 4 hrs since leaving home I had handed over some money, dropped of some freight, broken some shit and managed to travel 140 km's, but the bike had not moved, nor the mountain of tyres, spares and tools that surrounded it,
not a single murmur from the rear. (This pleasant silence from the rear was interrupted some hours later after I made the fools choice to stop at McDonalds for brunch around 2:30pm, scoffing it as i drove.)

I drove, i drove, i drove, i drove. Arriving in St Kilda around 8:00pm I caught up with some friends, was reacquainted with my old friend Don Julio and the next morning experienced that long since forgotten joy of waking up next to a beautiful, untouched, top heavy, wet bottomed 3:00am pizza.

After quite possibly the best breakfast i've ever had (Thankyou fitzrovia) I dithered around Melbourne trying to get my phone fixed, or find the parts to fix it, before turning to cheapskate vibe and perusing the ancient technology in some of Chapel Streets pawn shops. I mean what the fuck is an iPhone 4 anyway ?! Baffled and bewildered by the things that junkies steal, and very disappointed in their apparent lack of Technosnobbery I stumbled into a JB HiFi and found a "packaging damaged" iPod touch that would become my new Laptimer. I can understand why the packaging was damaged. I don't know how Sanjay would've sent all of the emails of his withered penis to his girlfriend without taking the wrapper off.

The iPod wrapper......anyhoo....

Drive, drive, discovered a place called Berwick existed as this is where I had to go to pick up some Snap tray mounts for my Replay XD camera. Thanks to the guys at Mototrack, and then on to the Island. As it turns out most all of the RAT’s arrived at the same time and after settling in to our various abodes we trotted of to the RSL for a simple dinner to kick off the weekend.

Friday Practice

The practice day seemed to be a combined effort between the Phillip Island circuit and the Preston MCC. It kind of set the trend for the rest of the weekend. There were positives as well as the negatives.With the gates not opening til 08:00 there was a conga line of at least 70 vehicles when I arrived at 7:30. It seemed that almost the full complement of 180 racers had shown up for practice.
With Supersport up first we barely had time to get the bikes into the garages before missing our first session of the day at 9:00. This wasn’t hampered by the briefing which took all of 30 seconds and couldn’t be heard anyway. Thankfully the club had gotten together with the PI people and organized the garages for the race meet to line up with the practice day so there would be no reshuffling at the end of the day.
The second session rolled around and i managed to get a massive 2 laps in before it came to an end. The third session was 4 laps, the 4th session 2 laps again and the final session of the day i got another 4 laps in.
There’s a very good chance that other riders in Supersport got a few more laps in than i did considering i started the day with a 2:14 for my first outing and then worked it down to a 2:05 at the end of the day.
The first feelings you get when you ride Phillip Island are where the fuck am I, who built this thing and why are there constant warnings about geese on turn 6 ? But for me a few of the corners slowly started coming together and I thoroughly enjoyed the small amount of track time I got on Day one. Its a big help when you have MStevo listening and talking you through the various corners and explaining quite simply how to best have a crack at it next time. Thanks Mark.
Another benefit of having the Preston club on hand on the Practice day is that scrutineering was done in your garage during the course of the Practice day. They also brought around the sign on sheets and disclaimers for people to sign before we got stuck into “racing” the following day. Why is “racing” in quotation marks, you’ll understand when you see my vids…..

Saturday Sprint Series

Another early start, although thanks to the Preston MCC efforts the day before all we had to do this morning was collect our transponders and fight like seagulls for the sign on sheets that were fluttering around the carpark to confirm that we had attended the briefing, which today went for about 90 seconds, and you couldn’t hear it anyway. The weather was absolutely perfect, no breeze, sun shining and not to hot.

Today there were to be 3 x 5 lap “Sprint” races. I started the day with 3 qualifying laps that solidified my 2:05 from the previous day and confirmed my spot at number 35 on the grid.
While there wasn’t meant to be anybody behind me Mazabuzz was kind enough to start 2 rows behind where he was supposed to so I was making up places already. After this first race we had a world to the Clerk of the course and suggested it might be helpful if the 12 row grid had numbers that went past 9 rows. He didn’t seem to fussed about us gridding up wherever we wanted to but decided to go and sniff around for a piece of chalk to work on his Renoir on the side of the track so we had something to distract us at the start of the next race. The grids were not progressive so I knew I would be cutting laps rather than racing today. I was okay with that.

In the first race of the day I was lapped by the race leader on the last turn so he ripped me off my final lap. I resolved to avoid that for the rest of the day and can happily say it didn’t happen in the remaining two races. My times for the day were consistent and kept dropping so I was pulling 1:58’s in the last race. Another day of improvement, stoked to get under the 2 minute mark and very happy to see everyone in my garage, Barbacetto, Mazabuzz and MStevo having similar wins and making progress.

As a point of reference a 1:58 at Phillip Island, while not being a fast lap by any means is still a 138km Hr average. Its a damn fast track, where braking markers hide over crests and fast corners hide around even faster corners.

There were a few fuckwads out there on track, trying to get under peoples skin by waiting right at the back of the pack before tearing through and cutting the noses off as many people as possible on the out lap, but thats what fuckwads do. Oh, and there were geese, lots of geese…..

Saturday night we all trotted of to Pino’s in Cowes for a great night of food, wine and laughter. At least thats what i was doing. I don’t really recall what everyone else was up to. I picked a nice bottle of Italian red and she didn’t stray from my side, or is it my front, for the whole evening, deciding to come home with me and have a sleep over. Staying with me right up until the end of the Race #1 the following day…..

Sunday TT Series

A different format for day #2, with 2 x 10 lap races and a few feature races in between. There was another 10 minute qualifying session for everyone in the morning. I don’t remember a lot of it but i cemented my place on the grid with another 2:05. Today was windy, and at Phillip Island you always feel the wind on track.

Supersport didn’t have their first race til after lunchtime so I set about concentrating on smoking as many cigarettes as I felt necessary to make sure that my back protector could still be worn. The diet works, I tell you. Like a modern day Cinderella…….aaaahh, Cinderella.


At 1:25pm we finally got out there to have a crack at a 10 lap race. I’d done some sums and figured that the leaders would be visiting upon me around Lap 7. So not only did it give me an indication of what lap we were up to it afforded me an opportunity to get some clean laps in and chase and follow whomever came past for as long as i could keep it up.

Needless to say in each of the 2 races my last few laps were my best, although I did find this a little strange considering how much time I spent slowing and moving offline for all of the furiously waved Blue flags.

It felt like the bottle of Red parted ways with my body towards the end of Race #1. I’d certainly sweat at least 750mls of crap out of me in that one. By the end of Race #1 I was so high on the experience and stoked with the knowledge that I could get out there and cut laps on this awesome racetrack. I was busting for Race #2 so I could go and do it all over again.

Race #2 got off to an interesting start when Team Zero’s comment about how you couldn’t miss his bike on track was validated after one of the weekends leaders had to start from Pit lane and came flying into Honda (Turn 4) all out of shape and collected Cam and sent him sliding into another bike before riding off into the distance, only to fall down crying in the middle of pit lane before the restart. Waaaahhh. It was also my best start of the weekend, the first one that is. The restart was a shambles, not on my part, I was fricken awesome but we were sent out, called back, sent out again, almost missing the gate as the Clerk of the course kept busy with his Renoir off to the sides.

I was consistently staying out of the way, enjoying myself thoroughly but my times were a little down. I managed to finish the weekend of with a 1:57 on the last lap of the day which made me happy that I had made improvements every day that I was down there.

The main reason I went down for this race meet, other than to experience the sheer thrill of the Island, was to snap myself out of the cycle of repetitive mistakes that I make riding SMP all of the time. Time will tell if this has worked for me but I did go away more than a little pissed that my riding is still a very vertical affair. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at lots of data from the weekend and thinking about what it means. I can happily say that if i can string it all together, i’ve got a 1:51 on paper already.

I’ve already set aside 3 days in December to go down there and do it all again. Its worth it.
That’ll do…..

Jamie

[Marshy]

Fantastic write-up mate! You should submit that to one of the bike mags.

[Team Zero]

Awesome work. I should get off my lazy arse (the queens English for marshy) and do some post weekend write ups of my own. Side note, you have now raced at a world class race track in sub two minutes. You are far ahead of the vast majority of the 50,000 armchair experts that are going to watch the gp.

[dan]

Sounds like fun. Put me down for next year!

[Mstevo]

I would have loved to race their again 2 weeks later I reckon I had sub 40 in me and the old girl.