A great 1st race weekend!

What a fantastic weekend!
After a much more comfortable night in our newly modified van, and with the luxury of power and a heater, Friday practice at Brands started wet. I have never ridden on wet tyres before, so it was valuable experience. I was amazed at the amount of grip available and more amazed to be over taken by several guys around the outside of me with their knees on the deck!
The day got progressively better weather wise and dried out nicely. Phil's Laverda ran nicely but not so good was the FZ. The clutch was still slipping badly and the motor was intermittently running on 3 cylinders for much of the day. I found that giving the thing loads of hard abuse seemed to get all 4 kicking in and by the latter part of the day all seemed ok. Another problem was ground clearance, with the belly pan and back brake lever hitting the deck quite badly. I raised the lever quite a bit which helped as it felt too low anyway but the belly pan would have to wait for workshop attention back at home. By the end of the weekend it had worn a big hole. More getting covered in fiberglass resin then!
The front forks are going to need attention at some point soon, funds permitting. I may just have put up with it for the next race but they will need to be re-sprung and re-valved to give more adjustment as they are at their maximum level. The rear felt good though which is a big relief.

The most urgent thing to sort will be the clutch. The bike was loosing big time along the straight and especially up the steep hill into Druid's bend and pretty much anywhere involving hard loading under acceleration.
So after a very busy and exhausting day of testing, the nerves started to build, and having spent much of the day sorting things and worrying more about the bike than what was happening with my riding and learning where I was going, I wasn't too confident about the coming races.
I shouldn't have worried so much. The racing proved to be a massive high for me and a great relief to be finally doing it after all our long hours and hard work over the winter. Phil and I had a great time on the track and a great battle in the final race on Sunday. we met some great guys over the weekend and had some fantastic laughs.
I will have to write more over the next few days as there is so much to say and some good photos in the post. It's now rather late so I'm off to bed with some great memories of my first weekend of racing.