BOASTIE & BOURNE: THE LEARNING CURVE
After a good season’s start, it’s about making progress.
Since last month Franco has raced our Junior Superstock Kawasaki ZX-6R at Donington, Brands Hatch and Thruxton, and it’s been a learning process for Franco as a rider and for the team.
The Donington races, which were support races for the World Superbike meeting, went really well. Our goal for the season had been to get him into the top ten and the lad only went out and scored a 7th and an 8th at his second meeting. So that was a massive result, it proves he has the talent. Unfortunately, Brands Hatch and Thruxton were disappointing; Franco was 14th in both races and where we are struggling is in qualifying. We didn’t get that right at either meeting.
The top three or four riders in the class are maybe a second faster than everyone else, but the next 15 are only separated by fractions of a second. It’s really tight, so if you have a bad qualifying you end up starting down in 18th, have a good one and you’re fifth. And that’ll make all the difference when it comes to where you’ll finish the actual race. Grab onto the coat tails of that leading bunch from the start and they’ll drag you along with them, get stuck in with the second pack and it’s really hard to break through.
So we messed up qualifying at Brands and Thruxton and it’s almost all about tyres. You’re limited to how many you can use during the weekend, which is fair enough, but it seems like unless you fit a new rear halfway through your qualifying session, which is only half an hour, you’ll end up nowhere. So you definitely don’t want to be wasting your tyres in free practice.
At Thruxton Franco was up to eighth in qualifying and it was all looking good, then everyone else switches to a fresh tyre, and he ends up 19th on the grid, with a real battle on his hands to score some points. He had a decent race, got it up to 12th but ended up 14th when the red flag came out.
On the plus side the bike is flying. At Brands we were fastest through the speed trap at 151.6mph, the next was 148. We’ve not touched the engine apart from filter and exhaust so that comes from having a fresh bike, though Franco can take some credit too. Coming from the Talent Cup he knows that he’s got to get properly tucked in to get every possible fraction, and he’s carrying decent corner speed onto the straight too.
We’re not allowed to use data logging, but comparing sector times is interesting. At Brands Franco was losing time on the left-hander before Clearways so he needs to do a bit of work there.
And we need to get a bit better with suspension set-up. We’re learning from the teams around us really, but it seems like the set-up that Franco says he’s happy with may not actually be fastest, so we’ll try some different settings at the coming rounds as well as
fitting a new rear tyre halfway through qualifying, and we’ll see how we get on with that.
There are races at Donington and Cadwell before this issue of the magazine is out, and then we’re at Snetterton, Silverstone and Oulton Park in September. Maybe by then we’ll have got qualifying sorted and be getting regular top tens. Please come along and watch if you can.
I wasn’t actually at Thruxton to help Franco. It was the CRMC’S Donington Park Race of the Year that weekend, so I was there to race my Tigcraft KTM Supermono and the Honda 350 classic racer, and we had a great time. I got a bunch of class wins with the KTM, and was having great dices for the overall win with George Hogton-rustling on an 850cc Triumph Trident. He’s really fast (and half my age) but I managed to get ahead a couple of times, though I think he always had it under control.
There were cracking races on the 350 Honda too. There’s about seven or eight lads in that class who are really on it, and with really evenly matched bikes it’s like a Moto3 race with slipstreaming and fighting for places in every corner. We ended up with a laurel wreath for 3rd in 350 Classic Race of the Year, so I was dead chuffed with that. After 40 years of racing motorcycles it was my first ever laurel wreath. How good is that. It’s on the wall in the garage now.
We will have done Aberdare Park in Wales with both bikes by the time you read this instalment, and I haven’t raced there since 1987 so I’m really excited about it, with that and all Franco’s races its going to be a busy couple of months for all of us. See you there…
‘The lad went out and scored a 7th and an 8th. That was a massive result, it proves he has the talent’
If you fancy buying Franco a set of tyres, or just a packet of biscuits, go to uk.gofundme.com