We raced! We loved it!

Stuart Boatwright, Andrew Finlay and Greg Roberts raced a 1986 Yamaha FZ750 1FN at the Endurance Legends event as part of Team Early Stocks. So how was it, Greg?

“Stuart’s partner Sonia took the reins as team manager, bringing in youthful expertise to the team in the form of Tom Baskerville – timing/logistics, Kieran Maidment – fuel / tyres and F1 technician Viv Cowley was engine management.

“With 49 teams on the entry list we knew we were going to have play the long game to nick a half decent result. Saturday morning brought rain but afternoon qualifying brought drier conditions and we came out in 29th position on the grid with a decent 1m 26s.

“The sun came out for Sunday’s race and we all knew what we had to do, finish without penalties, crashes or blow-ups and not run out of fuel: easy! Misfires, starting glitches and clutch issues plagued us throughout practice but no excuses from hereon out, we just needed a half decent start.

“The lights went out and Andrew couldn’t get her away, the old FZ bogged and we were down in third from last at Redgate. Not good. All three of us had two 45 minute stints to do so it was going to be a long afternoon. Andrew pulled it back though with a spirited first session and we were back in the hunt. My turn next, a quick fuel top-up and a nice clean handover and I was out there. Three laps in and a couple of riders went down and out came the safety car which gave me a few laps to settle down and get into some sort of rhythm: 45 minutes seems an age on track when you’re more used to 10 or 15 minute scratch races but we managed to stay out of trouble and get back into pit lane before handing over to the boss Stuart.

“Stuart was going really well and we must have been around 26th place. The next pit stop and there was a problem, oil lights on in the turns and braking, must’ve been burning a bit off so we had to do the first of two oil top-ups just in case: it cost us a lap or two but that’s endurance racing.

“I was up for it in my second session and I felt good on the FZ, got decent space and got into a few scraps with the odd GSX-R and FZ600 which was great, stuck two or three consecutive 1m 25s laps in towards the end of my stint which I was reasonably happy with considering the tyres were beginning to fade.

“Getting into the last few minutes and we thought we could be in for a top 10 finish in F2. Stu finished to a great cheer, eventually giving us eighth in class. What a weekend, I’ll never forget it. When’s the next one Stu?”