The Biker Place

The bank holiday weekend at Brands Hatch was an interesting weekend to say the least.

We arrived at Brands at around 11.30pm on Thursday night to find out that we couldn’t gain access to the paddock till 7am the following morning. No real problem as the bike and Nathan were all ready to go, so we parked up and went to bed in the caravan.

6.30am comes and we’re up and ready….mmm….7.20am before they allow us in, so we had a mad rush to find a spot and get Nathan and the bike to Scrutineering by 7.30am.

First Practice
Damp wet and a brand new engine to run in, Nathan was told to be careful and run the bike steady for a few laps…..all went well.

Back in the paddock, Nathan said the bike felt weak. So after a quick look I decided to up the jetting a little just to ensure all was well….mmmm…..bad mistake, Nathan took the bike into qualifying and oh dear. He was riding a crazy frog..Looks like I jetted it too high….Nathan struggled on slipping the clutch trying to get it to rev but nope it would not rev right..Nathan managed to qualify in 20th place overall. Not a good start to the weekend.

Once he got back to the paddock, we stripped the engine to see if all was fine. It was ok but very wet inside due to the over jetting….so the jets were changed again only this time down from where we started the day.

RACE 1

Nathan got a reasonable start and started to chase down Ryan, Taz and Kyle….it wasn’t long before he found himself in 2nd place in his class…as hard as he could ride it was just too much to ask to catch Kyle……so Nathan ended the race in second…brilliant considering his grid position.

RACE 2

This time Nathan got off to a cracking start and was soon in the lead of his class.

As the race unfolded, we had a titanic battle between Nathan, Taz and Kyle swapping the lead at every corner, to add to that there were a few Aprllia’s mixed in the fight….the race was red flagged with a few laps to go and after the roll back Nathan was pronounced the winner in the 80 class and 4th over all…..a fantastic result from 20th and Nathan takes his first win of the season.

Saturday – RACE 3

After a lazy morning checking everything over, we had 30 mins to the start of our race..time to warm the engine up….mmmm….not sounding as crisp as the day before…..nothing was found the night before when it was stripped so off with the carb and give it a good clean….on the way up to the grid I wasn’t convinced all was well.

Anyway off they went and my worst fears came true. Lap 3 and Nathan slowed coming out of Druids….he kept it going but the same thing happened again and again for the next few laps. Nathan adapted his riding to cope with the loss of power and his lap times came back down, he managed to bring the bike home 4th in class…not too bad then.

On further inspection it turned out to be a broken reed petal.

RACE 4

Another cracking start and a good battle with Kyle and a few Aprilia’s, Kyle got the better of the traffic and Nathan managed to finish in 2nd position again……so all in all we had a good weekend and I think we both learnt a thing or two about little 2 stroke engines!

Share this on: