wakefiled02

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Wakefield Park

Prelim Report

The RB Import Series, presented by the Bankstown/Wiley Park Motorcycle Club moved to Wakefield Park for the Clubman 5our Race. As the name indicates this was a team 5 hour endurance race. With no less than 3 in the team and some with 4 riders, and with 33 teams competing, it doesn't take a lotta maths to work out this was pretty big! And what a tremendous track Wakefield Park is. Spectators can see the whole event from the one spot and the setup out there is amazing. New facilities everywhere and with all needs catered for it was a pleasure doing pleasure!

The team arrived on the Saturday to check a few things in practice and get some bugs ironed out and lucky they did! The team ladder is a tough one to climb, but Farbio! Not hooking up a team mate's brake lever is playing it just a bit rough isn't it?

I'm constantly amazed by the progression and professionalism of these guys. Setting up with a minimum of fuss. Out came all the gear including of course the bikes and the generator, TV to check lap times, toolboxes and spares galore, and out they went to circulate and get the bikes set up.

Team 86 led by John MacDonald contested the outright competition and Team 22 managed by Simone went for the grade comp.

Now didn't Farbio look hot in his new Tiger Angel leathers! Rumour had it that he was seen rubbing his new kneepads on the bitumen out the back but naaaaaaaaaaa.........he wouldn't do that! would he?????


	Changeover time

Sunday dawned to a perfect day, the team well shod with new rubber all round. And it was off with a LeMans type start with positions set by qualifying times done earlier. The riders ran to the bikes, hit the button and were off. Team 86 got away well but Dredgie (who reckons he won the footrace by a mile) had trouble starting the bike and got away 2nd last. Slowly but surely they worked their way through the field for the next 5 hours and only one grade team in their division finished in front of them.

John's 86 team worked forward through the day and and finished outright 2nd! Good stuff!

And.....wellllll........how did Farbio go? New leathers on, shaking like a leaf and sweat pouring out of him, out he went on his change over. Each rider doing a half hour stint. To be fair, yeh, I did see him scrape his knee and yeh, he didn't do too badly at all. Circulating in around 1.10 average he held up pretty well. Not a bad effort! Scary bit is he thinks he knows a few things now and that's bound to be dangerous! What's worse he now has a trophy on the mantelpiece......New helmet required to fit that head ya think?

Well done all, great team effort!

The Flying Farbio Race Report

Well Duds had to leave early on race day. He wasn’t real keen on it but I suppose you have to do what you have to do, so he asked me to take a few notes and give a little report on the final results for Wakefield.

Now this couldn’t be better, as the race team itself hasn’t yet had the opportunity to say a few words of appreciation for the support that has been given by this site and its members and believe me the whole team thinks its terrific the support we have been given. So much so, that we have made the decision to proudly display the Wildcat website www.wwwildcats.com on all of the bikes and on the Bus hoping that this will give YOU the exposure you have allowed US to receive. We would also like to thank Duds himself for the way he jumps in not only on race day but on practice day and really works his little bum off doing whatever is needed to help us out, the guy has even pulled a clutch out of a Ducati and worked out what was wrong to get us back on the track. The guy will have a go at anything no worries. And to be honest Duds is not writing this because the poor bugger was too damn busy on race day to really get a good handle on what was going on. So here's how the day went.

As Duds has said previously the weather was terrific and the track was great. We were all expecting start the race in a fog but it was as clear as a bell and we had entered 2 teams of 4 bikes each. Team 86 and team 22. Qualifying didn’t go all that well for team 22. Dredge encountered problems when on his first lap he broke his gear leaver off leaving Rutty to try and pick up the lost time, which he seemed to do quite well considering, giving us a grid position of 20 out of 33. We all bitched and scratched and argued about who was to do the Le Mans start and good old Dredge drew the short straw. Now if you can picture a bull elephant on roller skates that was Dredge in full flight perambulating across the track to dive on his bike and get off the mark second last. Now running might not be Dredge's strong point but throw him on a bike and it’s a whole new ball game and in no time he was pushing his way up through the pack and settling us in to a good position. We worked on doing max 30 mins each on the track, then changing riders, which was how the day progressed, and by the second hour of the race we had moved ourself into 2^nd position in our grade. John in team 86 had moved to 2^nd overall, so from this point on it was heads down and tails up for both teams to catch the leaders in both our respective classes. Dredge ran the team home in the final lap, scoring us a trophy for 2^nd place in the grade teams, and we had managed to nearly close the gap between us and the first place winners towards the end. Team 86 also finished well with 2^nd place overall. Damn good effort. This wasn’t a bad effort for Vee Two racing. As yet we have not been to a meeting where we haven’t received a trophy. Personally I found the day absolutely great and discovered how good it is to come into a corner with both eyes open. Makes a hell of a difference to how fast you can go.

The statistics

Number of laps completed 243

Rod Day Best individual lap time 1min 07.432sec

Dredge Best lap 1 min 07.703sec

Rutty Best Lap 1 min 08.004sec

Palmer Best Lap 1 min 11.714sec

As John McDonald was in a separate team we are unable to separate his lap times.

The average lap time for all completed laps for team No1 who finished first was 1 min 08.542sec

Team 22 average lap time for all laps completed was 1 min 14.49sec not too far of the pace.

Oz Event pics below compliments of Farbio