This meeting was the third I have lined up for since my accident.
In November we raced in the Australian Historic Titles at Eastern Creek in Sydney.
I wanted to do the Ozzy Titles because I had shot my big mouth off at a meeting with my rehab team when I was asked to set some goals for myself going forward.
Me being me stated that I would qualify for and be racing in the next Australian Titles.
At that stage I had to be lifted in and out of my bed every day with a gantry and couldn't go to the bathroom by myself.
It was one year and one week to the day since my accident when I lined up for that first race and I got my ass kicked.
It was the first time that I can ever remember getting lapped, but thanks to a lot of terrific people ( many of them on this forum) I managed to achieve the goal I had set myself.
Next meeting was the Philip Island Classic.
I wasn't expecting much and that's exactly what I got.
A very poor qualifying time saw us on the second last row of a grid of 32 sidecars.
But we slowly improved over the course of the weekend and the bikes straight line speed (the radar gun setup at the start/finish line had us clocked at 197kph) helped us finish in forth place overall.
The Vic Titles where held at Broardford about an hour north of Melbourne.
The track is fairly tight and about 2km in length.
I had hoped to take up where we left off at PI but it was not to be.
We arrived late and missed out on Fridays practice session.
Once again we where unable to post a competitive qualifying time and where relegated toward the back half of the field.
Each of our four title races panned out basically the same.
I would jump the majority of the field off the start into the first corner and gain a pretty decent buffer up the back straight.
After that things turned pear shaped.
I was just not physically strong enough to steer the bike through the tight section of the track and our corner speed was woefull.
By the time we got through the essess and the tight off camber left hander onto the start/finish straight I had half the field stacked up behind me.
There was a fair bit of paint getting exchanged and at some stage I must have copped a pretty decent whack on the foot. It is blown up like a balloon and is black as the ace of spades.(lucky I can't feel it)
Once we hit the straight I would gap them again.
Each lap of every race followed the same pattern.
Our lack of corner speed was pretty embarrassing to be honest.
By the end of the weekend we had posted enough points to finish 2nd overall in the champion ship but I can't say I'm happy nor do I feel that I earned the result.
I've gone from 130kg to 90kg since the accident and it would seem that at the moment I don't have the physical strength to muscle the bike around the tight smaller tracks.
I have a pretty sever brachial plexus injury (Mike's probably the only on this forum that knows what the hell that is but never mind) :)so I don't have a lot of use of my left hand and my clutched down shifts are suffering, I'm missing far to many down shifts.
We have two meetings coming up over the next six weeks, both on tight tracks so I have a lot to think about and more to do.
Cheers,
Brian
HEY! I've finally worked out how to download pics from photo-bucket. Thanks Retro and Jon.
