A HARD HOMECOMING
Ready for action, our Kawasaki ZX7-R Golden Era Superbike before Brands Hatch.
Brands Hatch, our home circuit. It’s where it all started with Ritchie’s first ever track day on a Honda NC30, when he was a teenager. It was home to our first ever practice and race on a Suzuki 600 in the GSXR Trophy Series over 10 years ago and after Ritchie’s 5-year break from bike racing, it was the circuit he returned to on the Kawasaki ZX7-R in ThundersportGB’s Golden Era Superbikes.
The early days round Clearways on the old GSXR – notice the riding style
is completely different on a lighter 600!
We’ve been there more times than we can remember, racing on the short Indy circuit and the long GP circuit, back in the days when Ritchie competed in the KTM RC8 Supercup at BSB rounds and at times on his GSXR 600 with Bemsee.
He loves, and knows, every part of it.
This time round we had the ZX7-R running better than ever – and with Ritchie on top form – we were looking forward to a great weekend.
The Wiseco Wasps – shoulder to shoulder, tails up and ready to go.
However, before the Brands Hatch meeting – when we returned from the Mallory – there were quite a few repairs to be made to the ZX7-R after Ritchie had crashed out during the last race. We also gave the bike a complete once over to try and reduce the risk of anymore technical issues that seemed to have dogged us at crucial times this year.
Mallory misery – the ZX7-R takes a breather after crashing at Edwinas’ chicane.
There was quite a lot of damage from what seemed to be a fairly innocuous low-side crash at Edwina’s chicane. We found out later that the front forks had wound themselves out about 6 or 7 turns, softening the suspension, which caused Ritchie to lose the front and fall. We now check them after every session. There were the obvious fairing scrapes to touch up and we had to replace the R&G Racing crash protectors – which did their job on most of the body work and more importantly protecting the frame – along with a clutch lever; but the worst thing of all was the damage to the swingarm.
A new swing arm off ebay was a straight-forward swap over.
It had a massive dent with a hole in the side – we checked it and, believe it or not, it was straight! However, we didn’t think the Scrutineers would be happy with it though, so we had to get another one. We also broke a complete foot-peg assembly, and a quickshifter.
Anyway, racing is an expensive mistress as they say, and you’ve got to spend money to keep her happy.
Ritchie made a few tuning tweaks to the flat-side carburettors – different jets – and the engine sounded better still; we were all set to run it again around the Indy circuit.
Fastest lap and a lap record in Race 1… he even had a decent qualifying with the GP1’s!
Well, on paper, you’d say we’d a good weekend at Brands hatch: 3 wins out of 4 races and a lap record to his name is good by anyone’s standards. But what happened in between races and practice made for a painful, tough and expensive weekend.
You can read Ritchie’s story here:
Anyway, there was a lot of damage to both bikes after two nasty high sides, one at Graham Hill in practice – when Ritchie badly twisted his ankle – and one in the wet at Clearways in Sunday’s race.
If you think this looks bad you should see bike number 2!
So now were back home again with a load more work to do with very little time before our next meeting at Anglesey in 2 weeks.
We managed to patch the main bike up to run in the second race, but once we stripped it down in the garage there was a lot more to do to restore it back to somewhere near its former self.
Out in the sun again, this time with the fiberglass kit as both fairings need more than a touch up.
The Dymag wheels we like so much have been damaged beyond repair; this has totally surprised us as the crash at Brands, in practice, wasn’t high-speed at all. We took them to a specialist recommended by Dymag in Maidstone; a company called Motoliner. Tommy and George are two of the nicest guys you can meet and have been really helpful and once they’d checked them, they found cracks near the spokes, which means they’re scrap.
Dymag have been good too, they organised for them to be picked up from Motoliner and delivered to themselves so the damaged wheels can be examined by their own technicians.
We’re obviously very upset about all of this and are anxiously waiting for an answer from Dymag as to how they could’ve been so badly bent and damaged. Hopefully we can come to some arrangement with them on some new ones or some kind of offer. Fingers crossed. We doubt very much we’ll have anything for Anglesey though.
So, what about the spare bike?
I don’t think there’s anything on it that hasn’t escaped a scrape or a dent; fairing, fairing brackets, windscreen, air intakes, exhaust, tank, seat unit, frame, forks, electrical instruments and oil pressure meter, handlebars, levers, wheels…. the list goes on. The only thing we can honestly say is intact is the engine, and we’ve not run it yet.
Not a lot left of our spare machine after the crash on Friday.
At this moment, we’re not sure whether we’ll have two bikes ready to take to Anglesey, we need to get the main one right before we start on number 2 – we’ll see.
Anyway, most of the repairs are under way and should be finished soon.
See you on the island!
Team 71
Thanks again to all our sponsors: Wiseco Piston Inc/Race Winning Brands, Kais Suspension, Carrillo, Cradley Kawasaki, Nova Racing Transmissions, Mark Wright at Holbeach Tyres, OPIE Oils, R&G Racing, TA-Creative and Dymag, also to Motoliner in Maidstone, for helping us sort out the Dymag wheels. http://www.motoliner.com
