Friday test day.
After a reasonable night’s sleep, the day dawned bright and sunny, made bearable by an occasional morning breeze. Temperature was already mid to high 20s. Rik was due on circuit at 11.20 so we had a few hours to check over the Triumph and relax a little. First though, we all had to have a CPR test for the return journey back to France. Not that we were checked coming into Spain and as it happened not checked when we got back to France, at least we knew Covie hadn’t joined us for the weekend.
The first session was to blow away the cobwebs and for Rik to become acquainted with the circuit, which is very technical and about 4kms in length. The view from the spectators gallery, two stories high, meant I could just about see the whole lap which was great, only losing sight at a couple of places. Now I won’t bore you with the intimate details of every session but after a hard days work with a few problems Rik finished with a best time of 1:57.2, 9 seconds down on the pole position time last year. Not great, yet not disastrous with such a long lap and the high temperature will slow times a little as well.
Now, this is so very typical of a race weekend, the bike hasn’t missed a beat all year and it was today she decided to throw us a curve ball. On the second lap of each session, she developed a slight misfire, flat out down the start finish straight then clear for the remainder of the practice. The Diagnostic Dept. is unavoidably stuck in the UK, so we had to fault find, manually. Just like the old days! Needless to say we didn’t find a resolution. Very puzzling. Still bike and rider survived the day, extremely hot, but in one piece. The pair of them took a good few hours to cool down properly. After some dinner, Trudie was stripped down, cleaned and prepped for the following days excursions.
Proper racing, at last!
