Manx GP – 26 August
Last day of practice today and we were woken by the patter of persistent rain bouncing off of the truck’s roof. Not promising for the afternoon’s activities of our practice and the Lightweight race.
A little later we had a surprise visit from Phil, who was doing some business in Douglas. He told us that conditions over the mountain were atrocious, but from Signpost corner a mile away from the paddock, it was bone dry. Suppose the rain has to stop somewhere! It would take a while to dry but we still had four hours, so all was not lost.
During the morning I was more focused on how to get some more speed out of Trudie, when it suddenly dawned on me that we hadn’t played with the final gearing. As per recommended spec, I’d set her up on standard road gearing which theoretically would see 151mph on the speedo. It took a while for me to convince the others as just about everybody else agrees that road gearing is the way forward, but I won the day and we changed to what we’ve been using on the French short circuits. I’m a bit annoyed at myself for not thinking of it sooner. With any luck we’ll soon find out. If it works then the front end will be a little livelier for Rik, making it more exciting.
Trudie was given a quick polish with Mr Sheene and she was ‘ready for inspection, Sir’.
The call came up for all bikes to scrutineering and as we pushed her out of the awning, the heavens opened. She was quickly pushed back and repositioned onto stands. Then the announcement that all racing was cancelled as roads around the circuit were very wet in most places.
This left us with a chilled afternoon. The evening was spent with Matt and I having a few beers, while Sarah and Rik made our supper of microwave curries.
Which was nice!
