Maylar, 920 MkII Seeley Norton.
Steve, I really liked the track especially its flowing nature after the hairpin but like you say, it is difficult to go fast and I was struggling with the lack of trackside furniture to aim at, I do prefer the roads.
I managed to build a pair of wheels for the Heidenau tyres and I went out in the 10 min practice with them but it was hot and I I swapped back to the Continentals for the racing. The Heidenaus did feel planted and warmed up nicely.
As it was the first time round that track I was making plenty of mistakes running into corners hot etc, but no problems with the tyres and they felt good, I have a feeling I may use them full time when the Continentals are dead. I will need to use them more to be sure, but the aim for this weekend was just to scrub them for future races in the wet. One thing that may be a problem, they are quite low profile and I was hitting my toes earlier than with the Continentals.
My last race was wet but I left the Continentals on as I ended up as the only one in my class that didn't bugger off home when the rain came and I figured it was free points for the championship, and I had no intention of trying to brake any records.
So, Pembrey, new track for me.
I find new tracks a bit awkward for the first few laps, there is a need to go quickly so nobody runs into you, but you don't know where you are going. Pembrey isn't a long track, just under 1.5 mile with only 8 corners, 6 right and 2 left, it is a flowing track but just about every corner has a late apex and mostly no real visible cues where to start turning in, so like Steve said not hard to learn the way round but hard to go fast.
My first flying lap in practice was around 1:25 which by the end of practice 6 laps later was down to 1:20, not good enough to feel confident going into the first race, really could do with more track time at new tracks.
As usual for me, there were the comedy of errors all weekend starting with lining up for the start of the races on the car grid, I wasn't the only one so I didn't realise this until my mate told me after the third race, I did think I was a long way back but I wasn't bothered because every thing was new to me. The second thing was, after the bike had cooled down on Saturday evening, I decided to re-torque the head, nothing moved which was a bit of a surprise but, it turns out these engines need both plug caps on to run correctly, first race Sunday found me popping and banging round the first part of the warmup lap until I realised what was wrong, then I didn't like the idea of touching the cap to put it on with the engine running but I bit the bullet and all was well before I got back to my (car) grid spot.
I would say that being so far back didn't matter too much because there was always a bit of a bottle neck at the hairpin.
All the races were without incident and a track learning exercise. They have to combine classes to fill the grid and I was out with the Supermonos, which are very quick but there were only three of us in my class, which goes a long way to explaining my results, George Hogton Rustling on his Hercburg 960 BSA triple for me is unbeatable, he is just so fast, it isn't his bike though just him. Apparently he has rides in the Ducati cup at the BSB rounds this year so not a slow rider.
I say it isn't his bike because they are publishing our top speeds this year, I don't know where the trap was but bearing in mind he will have been coming off the corner before carrying more speed than me, his top speed was 104mph and mine was 104.5mph. His best lap time was 1:05.7 and mine in the third race was 1:13.7, that is the difference a real racer can make.
Still, I am happy, I dropped 12 seconds off my first laps and I am sure I have identified where I can make more gains with more track time and it looks like George's bike isn't that reliable as he only finished 1 race which puts me in first place in the championship by about 70 points, happy days.
Roll on Cadwell in two weeks.