Plan B to the rescue

Team Bike build a rocketship RC30 for Bol d’or 2019, but it explodes before takeoff. Enter Plan B, a bike largely untouched since 1991…

THIS WAS THE FIRST RACE for our 840cc engine, a bored out RC30 with Fireblade pistons in. It should have got us near the speed of the more modern Kawasakis, and it was going well in practice. It was making 132bhp and was one of the fastest bikes there. Then it threw a rod down the startfinish straight. We took a big chance fitting standard VFR750 rods – we knew that was the weak point of the engine but we were on a budget and we made a mistake. Saying that, we’d had it on the dyno and taken it up to 14,000rpm with no problem and it was limited to 12,500rpm for the track. You don’t know until you try…

So we had to use the spare bike, which was the original Howard Lees Racing Team Bike RC30 that was raced in 1991 at the Bol d’or by Steve Hislop, Simon Buckmaster and Pascal Gigou. Straight after that race the bike went into storage and wasn’t touched until 2014. That was when we took it out, changed the tyres and fluids, and Stephane (Mertens, two-time world endurance champion) and I raced it at the Classic Bol- d’or, which we won. It’s not been unused since then, apart from a parade lap of the TT (see Bike November, 2019).

The chassis is the same as it was in 1991 – all we did was change the oil in the forks and fit new discs and calipers. We left the engine alone though, so the rocker covers haven’t been off since 1991.

The bike didn’t fire up immediately in the first leg (the four hour endurance race is held over two two-hour legs) so Stephane was last of 60 riders away from the line. But he carved through and we ended up seventh at the end of the first leg, despite being way down on speed on the straights. We were doing 145mph, and the Kawasakis were doing 178. We geared it so that if we got a tow you could get in the slipstream without

Bol d’or 2019 two BIKES TAKEN: one BIKES BLOWN UP: fifth FINISHED: SATISFACTION FACTOR: off the scale

over-revving the bike, so that helped, but obviously if you didn’t get a tow you were stuffed.

The bike’s fuel efficiency was critical. We worked out that we could just about do one hour on a tank, but it was tight. Stephane actually had to come in one lap earlier because the bike was beginning to misfire on right hand corners because of fuel starvation. We filled it to the brim – 24 litres – and when Alex (Sinclair, the second rider) finished the first leg there was literally nothing in the tank.

It was a risky strategy, but only doing one stop gave us such an advantage because most of the quick guys had to do two stops – there’s no way a ZXR can last an hour on one tank and you lose about two minutes doing a stop.

In the second leg we did the same thing and finished fifth, which is amazing considering. When the lads went to pick the bike up from the parc ferme it got 50 yards and then ran out of fuel – they had to go back and get a fuel can.

Even though I was disappointed about the 840 because we would have had a good chance of winning, it’s a great story coming fifth on the Howard Lees bike. Stephane said it handled superbly, which is a real testament to how Howard had it set-up and the engine is a testament to Brian Capper who built it. It’s sad neither of them are with us to witness what a great bike they built – still up the sharp end after 30 years.