Barry Sheene Festival of Speed 2010 Eastern Creek Australia 3-4 April

It was a last minute decision to do this meeting and we only made it with financial help from the Australian Post Classic Club, Mike Pulman of North Drill and Pero’s barber shop.

There were 3 bikes and crew from NZ there, Sam Smith on Peter Lodge’s ES2 Norton, Terry Martin on Dave Kenna’s Manx Norton and myself on the SBR Norton Commando. We all met up on Thursday morning at Sydney airport to sort rental cars and vans then it was off to Botany to collect the bikes.

We arrived at the track in the afternoon to set the bikes up in the pit garage and reacquaint myself with a track I hadn’t ridden on for 12 years. I had lived in Sydney for a few years and on leaving Aus for the UK held the lap record for F3 which stood for a few years, I’m told. This is one of my favorite tracks in the world, lots of change of elevation, flowing and with a heart stopping first turn.

Friday was a practice day and by the 2nd session I was starting to remember the bumps and lines, the track hadn’t deteriorated much at all in the time I was away. We tested a Dunlop rear tyre and it worked well reducing my lap times by a second but it was doubtful if it would last the weekend and there were none to be found at the track.

Saturday and qualifying went well. We were entered in the Post Classic up to 750cc class and running in our race was the Post Classic Unlimited and Forgotten Era bikes - all much bigger capacity and more powerful than the Commando. We qualified 1st in our class and ahead of the the unlimited class bikes but 5th overall.

In the first race I was shocked to find the bike was detonating at the end of the start finish straight and had to shut the throttle to stop it. I was puzzled as we have never had this problem. I managed to win our class but was beaten home by Robert Young on a 1000cc Ducati and ended up 5th outright.

We had changed to a different fuel for qualifying and we guessed this had caused the detonation problem so we put bigger jets in to try and fix it.

During Race 2 the problem was slightly better but I still had to close the throttle to stop the detonation. I managed to beat the Ducati home this time and ended 4th overall.

Bigger jets were fitted and the head scratching continued as we lined up for the 1st Barry Sheene Fastest 40 Race. I had qualified 8th and after a good start and some close dicing with Robert and an RG500 and other big jap Forgotten Era bikes I finished in 6th place but we still had the detonation problem.

The bike was prepared for Sunday and the det problem was discovered to be the fuel having high oxygen content, other people were having the same problems. It was decided to mix the 2 fuels and see if that helped. We had also destroyed the Dunlop rear tyre and so returned to the Avon we normally use.

On Sunday, in the first race I ended up battling with Robert. They had fitted the 2nd of their new Dunlop tyres and he had an edge on me. The dicing was close and fast, at one point I ran into his exhaust at turn 1 which gave me a scare. I decided to back off and let my overheating rear tyre recover thinking I had at least 2 more laps left. Unfortunately, I had missed the last lap board and by the time I saw the chequered flag it was too late. To the relief of us all the detonation had gone and she was back to normal.

The next race was the 2nd Barry Sheene and battle commenced again Robert having fitted another new rear tyre. It was another close race and it went to the wire but again he finished ahead but in the meantime I had lapped, we think, 4 seconds under the lap record for a 750.

The last race was the 4th 750-unlimited race and this time Robert didn’t have a new tyre. As the laps went on I could see he didn’t have the grip advantage of the first 2 races and I took the lead several times. My rear tyre was starting to overheat so I knew I had to make a break. I got past at turn 2 and managed to hold him off till the start-finish. At turn 1 I knew I was faster so this time I went as fast as I dared and got on the gas hard and early. The rear tyre started to spin mid-corner and kept sliding all the way to the exit which was heart stopping at that speed. I got the break I needed and held him off till the end.

The results for the weekend were;
1st 750 Post Classic
6th overall and 1st 750 in the Fastest 40 Barry Sheene race

Many thanks to SBR (Tony and Buck) for letting me ride this awesome bike, North Drill, Pero’s Barbers shop and the Aussie Post Classic Club for their help to get to the meeting.