NG Brands Hatch - Race Review (2018)

Our 2018 season didn't get started in the way it should have done - with "The Beast From The East" causing the race meeting to be cancelled before it even started!

Here is our story of the weekend - and how we used our newfound spare time...

Van packed to the brim!

Ready to Roll!

The race weekend was supposed to consist of a Friday test day, Saturday race day and Sunday race day. By lunchtime on Thursday we had packed up and were ready to leave. Our original intention was to hit the road at noon but due to a few delays (relating to household plumbing and toddlers!) we headed off around 2pm and then immediately sat in traffic on the M6!

3 miles into the journey...

:-(

Around 3.30pm we received notification (via the power of social media!) that the meeting had been cancelled by the organisers. Due to the poor traffic we were still 175 miles from Brands Hatch at this point. The Friday test day was still going ahead but we didn't think that continuing the journey (which would be a further ~400 mile round trip) would be worthwhile, so we managed to organise a ride out at a Darley Moor track day on the Friday instead.

We headed home, partially unpacked the van and caravan, then headed to Darley Moor on the Friday morning - arriving to a sodden track and paddock - but track time was track time and on a brand new (to us) bike, the more time we would get the better!!

Wets on...

...ready for its first ride!

We headed out on track in the first session and there was a lot of standing water around. After racing our Kawasaki Supertwin for the past five seasons (which revs to ~10500rpm), the need to rev our Kawasaki ZX6R to almost 16000rpm was a different experience! And when the revs (and speed) increased it was quite an initial shock - this bike moves!!

We took part in three morning sessions. In the following two sessions the track conditions improved from "wet" to "damp" and each time we rode until our fingers were numb - then when the lunch break arrived so did the sunshine! This dried the track sufficiently so that we could swap to dry tyres  :-)

Dry tyres and warmers on

During the dry session we we able to increase our pace gradually as we got more and more used to the bike - and we even hit 140mph on the back straight.

Whilst we were receiving tannoy calls for our next session a light rain shower started to fall, which then quickly turned into rain. We decided at that point to call it a day, as did the vast majority of the other attendees, so the track day was abandoned at that point by the organisers. But in one day we managed to ride the bike in wet conditions, damp conditions and dry conditions! We also managed to setup the bike to our preferences - handlebar and lever positions, etc - and found a couple of changes that were required, so it was most definitely a useful experience.

As for the NG Brands Hatch meeting, it turns out that cancellation was probably the best decision as Saturday brought snow, strong winds and an air temperature of -1.5C

With our preseason test schedule now complete (as short as it was!), our next outing will be the opening round of the Darley Moor championships on 7th/8th April.
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