Welcome to ETR Performance Yamaha Round 5 Race Report

Transcription

1 SuperGP Round 5 Race Report East London - 25 th July 2015 Welcome to ETR Performance Yamaha Round 5 Race Report If you are able to reference our previous race report from Red Star then this report for East London is the diabolically opposed report. This is one of our worst weekends in the 2015 SuperGP Championship. Unfortunately the primary catalyst for our difficult weekend was Mother Nature and no one can control that. Even though the conditions were the same for all competitors the combination of persistent rain, extreme cold, south easterly winds and snow (not far from East London) made for really difficult riding. And unfortunately because there are fairly few races in the rain the level of skills in wet weather racing differs vastly. But again all riders had to endure the same conditions. To summarize our weekend: Mathew Scholtz SuperGP crashed in Friday practise, qualified 2 nd and came 2 nd in Race 1 Brandon Goode SuperGP crashed heavily in Saturday practice and did not start DNS for Race1 Anthony Shelley Super600 crashed whilst lying in 3 rd position So it was a 100% hit rate of all our riders crashing at various times of the race weekend ensuring the team technicians did not have even a moment to spare. To make matters worse 3 of our 4 vehicles that went down experienced problems coming back. The organisors tried their utmost to get the racing underway before the rain came, by dropping the Superpole and Grid walks etc but to no avail. In the Super600 races the whole field crashed with the exception of 1 rider (Nicole Van Aswegen) and was eventually won by Adolf Boschoff even after he crashed twice in the race. This does go to show that the current electronics on the Superbikes does make a difference as the 600cc bikes do not have traction and wheelie control. Clinton Seller won the SuperGP race by some margin as Mathew decided to rather err on the side of caution in the treacherous conditions and bag his 20 points rather than crashing out.

2 The ETR Performance Yamaha pits did not even have carpeting as the pit roofing was leaking badly. Ricky Morais Crew Chief Super600 Yamaha R6 of rider Anthony Shelley #74 This is definitely one of those weekends we would rather confine to the file 13 annuls of time. Fortunately the good weather for the Friday track day session, allowed us to spend some time testing various gearing settings and suspension setting at high speed.

3 The top speed attained by Mathew on his SuperGP Yamaha R1 s was 289kms/h just before Potters Pass. The Super600 Yamaha R6 of Anthony was 258kms/h which is not far shy off the big bikes. At least we will have a base dry setting for next year if the SuperGP goes back to East London. Unfortunately we knew that the weather was not going to last and that the settings we worked on were all for nought. The rain was predicted at 100% and for once the weather forecasters got it right. Saturday the clouds rumbled over and all our previous days work was confined to the laptop. Warm up was still dry and for the first race of the day for Super600 the rain started 20 minutes before the start of the race. Race Direction decided to call the race a Wet Race meaning it is flag to flag racing with no stops to change tyres. So wet weather tyres were quickly ensconced on ALL the bikes. We further changed all the suspensions and front fork settings to a softer mode to compensate for the rain. Anthony had an awesome pull off and managed to keep close the leading bunch until a rider lost control and slid off in front of him and the leading bunch pulled a 10 second gap. However Anthony was still in 3 rd position. Unfortunately the conditions eventually caught him out and he crashed. In the SuperGP race Brandon was unable to start due to the fact that he had sustained an injury to his chest and he was sent to the hospital for precautionary X-Rays. Unfortunately the Hospital experienced Load Shedding as he arrived and had to endure a 3 hour wait. Mathew had a good pull off and tagged behind Clint (Yamaha R1) and Lance (BMW 1000RR) for the first couple of laps. Nicholas Kershaw managed to overtake Mathew and using all the power of the electronic aids managed to hold up Mathew for 5 laps. Both Lance and Nicolas had crashes right in front of Mathew which held him up even more. Mathew then put his head down and decided to try and reel in Clinton, which he was doing by 3 seconds a lap but the gap was far too big. So Mathew decided to settle for 2 nd and bag his 20 points. Again a real big shout out goes to the Team Techies Marthinus; Paul; Scheldon; Brandon (the Prof) and Patrick for managing to change from Dry to Wet tyres on 3 bikes in record time. I also wish to further take this opportunity to offer a big shout out to our own ETR sponsors, without whom we would not be on the grid such as for this month: AMP SHOEI for their dedicated track side service and support of the ETR Performance Yamaha Race team riders DENT DOCTOR WITBANK for their excellent turn around time and quality of service for having our crashed kit repaired and returned in record time RACETEC EXHUASTS for their dedicated track side service and support of the ETR Performance Yamaha Race team and riders ETR Performance Caterers for feeding a hungry and cold team of 40 members with an excellent curry and rice Unfortunately Race 2 was cancelled due to the adverse weather conditions which deteriorated even further making the circuit dangerous with mini rivers running through parts of the track. I am extremely pleased with how my SuperGP riders performed and their times are reflective of their commitment to the team and the Championship. Ciao from Ricky and bring on the next round at Red Star Raceway in August.

4 SuperGP Rider Mathew Scholtz #20 Mathew went on to qualify 2 nd on the grid. Mathew further went on to claim a 2 nd for the day. Mathew going on to qualifying 2nd on the grid. Mathew powering out of final corner onto main straightaway

5 SuperGP Rider Brandon Goode #71 Brandon unfortunately had a very tough weekend. In the dry conditions Brandon was getting a good setup from the bike and was making steady progress session to session. Unfortunately during the morning warm up where the conditions had changed from the previous day s blue skies Brandon fell victim to the cold tarmac and whilst exiting Copacabana corner the bike high sided throwing him off straight onto his chest Unfortunately Brandon started coughing up blood which meant that it was mandatory for him to taken to the hospital for X-Rays. This meant he would miss qualifying but was hoping to be back for the race. Unbeknown to him and his parents, the hospital landed up having load shedding and he was kept waiting for more than 3 hours before the X-Ray was done. After having been given the all clear he returned only to be told that Race 2 had been cancelled due to the adverse weather conditions. Brandon was justifiably disappointed but takes it in his stride and will focus on the healing process and getting prepared for the next round which will be a testing schedule/regional race at Red Star Raceway. Brandon #71 pushing his R1 as hard as possible

6 Super600 Rider Anthony Shelley Anthony again showed his maturity by focusing his practise sessions on rear end grip and traction as braking is not such an important issue at East London, unlike Red Star. Anthony Shelley #74 - qualified 4 th on the grid and crashed Heat 1 in the Super600 Anthony on a charge in Free Practise.

7 Results Page: Sponsored by iadapt and Emtek Racing. Superbike TOTAL Pos Name Bike No Bike 1 CLINT SELLER 1 YAMAHA MATHEW SCHOLTZ 20 YAMAHA LANCE ISAACS 38 BMW BRENT HARRAN 77 KAWASAKI BRANDON GOODE 71 YAMAHA 99 NICHOLAS 6 KERSHAW 55 KAWASAKI 97 7 ANDRE CALVERT 9 KAWASAKI 27 8 ANTHONY SHELLLEY 74 KAWASAKI 22 9 GARRICK VLOK 64 KAWASAKI KYRAN DE LANGE 49 BMW 16 SANDRA 11 STAMMOVA 511 BMW 0 7 Supersport Pos Name R 1 R 2 R 1 R 2 R 1 R 2 R 1 R 2 Steven 1 Odendaal KAWASAKI Dnf 2 Michael White KAWASAKI Blaze Baker KAWASAKI Nicole van Aswegan TRIUMPH Adolf Boshoff KAWASAKI Malcolm Rudman YAMAHA Dnf 7 Allan-Jon Venter TRIUMPH Ricky Weare KAWASAKI Dylan Barnard KAWASAKI Dnf 9 Corbin McCallum KAWASAKI Sheridan Morais YAMAHA 25 Dnf 11 Jesse Boshoff KAWASAKI Dnf 12 Anthony Lessing KAWASAKI There were no published results for the Super600 class at the time of release of this report.

8 A Huge thanks to all the support from our generous partners that make it possible for us to partake in the sport we love: WITBANK