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Hello again, it\'s been a while since I\'ve written a race report; since October last year, after the Four Hour Endurance race.
The Suzuki Winter Series has started again, and after taking a period away from racing due to a house purchase, and work commitments, I\'m happy to be racing the R6 again. This last weekend the Suzuki Series 2001, kicked off at Taupo in the first round of six. Both Greg and I took our bike\'s down to have a little fun.
Having had quite a while off racing, I was a little apprehensive about how things would go. So I tried to take the pressure off, and start from scratch again, starting slowly and trying to find my feet.
My personal best time at Taupo is a 43.02 seconds. I had 2 practice sessions before starting on 3 sets of races, in two classes: A Grade and 600 Sports Production. I decided that I would only race against the clock initially until I had re-found any talent. My times for the first race were in the 46\'s and 45\'s, dropping to the 44\'s in the second.
By the third race I was down in the 44\'s and touched the odd 43 second lap. My best time of the day was a 43.12 according to the timing done by Stella. - Quite close to my personal best..
Anyway, my results were somewhat disappointing. - The competition in NZ must be getting more serious, as the same times in the past would have yielded better overall results. I got 14th place in A Grade for the day, and 5th in 600 Sports Production.
The next round is in two weeks at Manfeild, if I manage to do all of the rounds, achieving consistently reasonable results, hopefully the end series result will be worth while. - Meanwhile, I\'ll be focusing on practice and fitness training.
There seemed to be a lot of overly eager people out there at the weekend, a few trying a little too hard - a lot fell off. - The series is one of NZ\'s longest, with 6 rounds, so it\'s going to be the most consistent who do well.
The meet ran very smoothly, especially considering it was the first of the year for this crew, so credit goes again to Tim and his hard working team. - We look forward to competing again in a couple of weeks at Manfeild.
