Brightside End of Winter 2004 Race

Sat 31st July. 2004

Race Report by Noel Lewis

After a cold and foggy drive through Lithgow and Bathurst arrival at Brightside was met with clear skies and little wind in contrast to last time.

The track had been graded again and an inch and a half of rain in the week preceding produced an ideal track that at first seemed dry on top but a little slick under the surface, but after a few bikes had done some laps the race line became lovely and soft freshly dug soil with out a hint of dust, and turn two at the bottom of the hill was even getting a bit of a berm building up on the exit so you could go in hard and bounce out with out too much worry,

Teams present to do battle and have a bit of fun,

    Bike #1, Parko

    Team Jeremy and friend, with support from Ken, 1 postie and other assorted bikes

    Team Primate (4 bikes.)  Noel 850, Michael 08, Rohan 28, Sam 87.

    Team fluoro, Father and son with 130 big bore postie

    Team Pete and Co.( 3 bikes). Postie special, RM framed CT110 motor, YZ 80 framed ct90

     Number 7 postie with Blue handle bars (sorry guys don’t have your name

Craig had a postie with silver front guard and secret mods???

And a few others plus support bikes,

(As I had four bikes to keep running I didn’t get a lot of time to see what everybody was up to.)

1^st Race a 5 lapper and as usual Jezza was setting the pace ahead of Parko and Noel

2^nd race was a 10 lapper and Ken wrestled Jeremy of his bike for a go. Jezza’s friend and Parko set of in the lead followed by Ken, Noel, Michael, Pete etc. Coming out of the hairpin on to the main straight and neither Parko or friend would give an inch and both ended up sprawled across the track uninjured leaving Ken and Noel battling it out in front with Noel taking the win after a close race with Michael in third.

Another 5 lapper saw Parko get a win so the 2-hour was shaping up as an open event.

The 2 hour started around  3.20 with about 9 nine bikes on the grid, team Jeremy set the pace Parko on #1 second, team primate started three bikes with only four riders and for awhile were running 3^rd and 4^th with team Pete dicing with Michael on 08 and team fluoro steadily clocking up the laps with Rohan and Sam on 28 just circulating in their first event.

At 1 hour and after a few rider changes the order was Jezza 2 laps up with Parko 1 lap ahead of Noel 850 and the rest a few laps down from there

Things were starting to change at 1.5 hour ,Jezza was out with his bike coming to a screaming stop on the down hill run between turns 1 and 2 Noel had unlapped himself and was only about half a lap behind Parko who still had a fuel stop to go.

Team Primate parked the still running 08 bike to concentrate on pushing the 850 bike to the end, team Pete seemed to be spending some time in the pits sorting a few problems and team fluoro were still running steadily though having to stop for oil every now and then.

During the last Half hour the #1 bike started to suffer from gear selection problems, slowing then finally stopping them .At the end of 2 hours only 2 bikes remained circulating Noel and Michael brought 850 home 1^st with team Fluoro a steady ride into second, the 850 bike is a new bike that only a few weeks before was rescued from a tip. It has been fitted with the front end and race pipe off the old 850 bike, has a standard bore with Tighe cam, rear suspension modified with swing arm pivot moved down and forward and shocks laid forward, many hours were spent with drill and grinding tool porting the head to improve flow the hidden benefit of this apart from more go was better fuel economy, only having to go onto reserve at about 1 ¾ hours.