Back to the track again

Yesterday was Round 1 of the PCRA of NSW’s Club Championship. After a week of solid, drenching, rain on the eastern seaboard of Australia, it seemed that the meeting was doomed to be a splash-fest, but, just as the forecasters predicted (shock, horror), Saturday dawned dry and with the prospect of a hot and humid day. And that’s exactly the way it turned out. And it was doubly so up in the commentary box at the top of the control tower where, as I am constantly reminded, hot air rises!

There was a good entry in most classes and some torrid racing. But, despite all this, the medical team was not required at all and there would have only been half a dozen accidents throughout the whole day. This COULD be as a result of the Clerk of Course reminding the riders at the riders’ briefing that, should they run off the track, they might likely be bogged there for the rest of the day!

The best races of the day were the Pre-modern F3 ones where Dave Abbott and Harley Borkowski, both from Sydney, swapped places (and some paint) in three ferocious races.  Abbott won the first round but Borkowski turned the tables in the second to win by a small margin. The “decider” was a cracker with Borkowski eventually winning by 3 hundredths of a second in a drag-race to the line. Fabulous entertainment.

Trolling the pits before the meeting always helps me to get the up-to-date stories to share with the crowd and often turns up some surprises. Imagine my surprise when I entered one of the pt garages to see a bike to be ridden by a rider called Vincent Bell. “Mmm, that name is strangely familiar,” I thought. Sure enough it was. Vincent used to race a 125 for CRRC when he was a lot younger than he is today, back in 1995, to be exact. Wrenching for him was another good friend, Axel Martinsen, from Canberra and it turned out that Vincent’s bike was the very same one that he had been racing some 17 years ago. Racing bikes don’t usually stay in the one family for long and certainly not this long.

That’s Vincent, on bike #66. Photo by the excellent Ray Oxford.

So it was a great day. At the end of the day, Dave Quinn, who was racing his 7/11 Kawasaki went down to Moss Vale to pick up my wheels so that is one more step along the way. The plan is still to be ready for the Sheene and I see no reason why this won’t happen.

As I mentioned before, while I was at the Island, Ed Haazer entrusted his voice recorder to me so that I could do some interviews for the MotoPod internet radio programme. I hate to brag, but they came out brilliantly and Jim and Jules have published them in full on the web site.

Phil’s interviews on MotoPod podcast

The broadcast is quite long and the other articles are also well worth listening to.

As a result of the interviews it appears that I may be going back to the track again sooner than I thought. Jim would like me to do the same thing at the WSBK meeting at the end of the month and is in the process of organising press accreditation for me. If he can, I will have access all areas to the pits and the riders and will be able to photograph and interview to my heart’s content. The deal will also continue to the MotoGp event at the end of the year if the boys are happy with the output. To say that I’m blown away is an understatement.

Back to the grindstone this week. I’ve put may name down for casual teaching at about a dozen schools last week so I’m hoping that this results in some (many) calls for work so that I can start replenishing the coffers. Fingers crossed.