Talking to the riders and others from the teams it became clear that the main topic of interest was tyres. Phillip Island, unlike any other circuit that the circus visits, is notoriously hard on tyres, specifically the left hand side of the tyre. With mostly left-hand corners you would expect this to be so but it’s not the direction of the corners that is the issue. The issue is that most of the l/h corners are high-speed ones, as indeed, most of the corners at PI are. There are only two slow corners, T4 (Honda Hairpin) and T9 (MG Corner) and, such is the level of grip afforded by modern tyres, these corners are taken at nearly 100km/h. All the rest are pretty much flat-out and this destroys the inside of the tyre long before the outside has passed its use-by date. So, Thursday and Friday’s sessions were as much about teams trying to juggle tyre strategy as anything else. One thing was certain. Like the Post Classic bikes who had been first to use the track after the resealing, everyone agreed that the speeds were up, grip levels were down and the lap records were going to take a beating.
Saturday dawned peaceful and clear and another hot day in prospect. While I believe implicitly the people who say that PI weather is awful, I have to say that, of the 5 times that I have been there, the weather has been perfect each time. There was much concern in our house after Rob Cole had been involved in a nasty incident in T4 in the last race of the day. Heading for what looked like a certain 3rd place in Race 2, Rob’s back wheel was touched from behind by a bike whose rider had left his braking just a bit too late and he had crashed, suffering a mild concussion and necessitating a helicopter ride to hospital in Melbourne. Fortunately, news came through during the day that Rob was OK, no serious injuries.
Work continued on Zoltan’s bike and the boys finally cracked it, finding that the problem was (as is so often the case) a two-fold one, a suspect coil lead and a fault in #4 carburettor. Going out for the last Historic race for the weekend, the bike still sounded ragged but it cleared on the sighting lap and Zoltan brought it home in 6th place also achieving his personal best time around PI, breaking the 1:50 barrier for the first time. Stirling work by both Zoltan and Lee Allen showed that you should never give up trying to solve a problem.
My interviews from Friday were also piling up. While I concentrated almost totally on riders this year, I did spare some time to get an interview that I had missed last year due to a technical glitch with my voice recorder. British legend, Ron Haslam, always travels with his son, Leon, to the races and I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to hear the great man reminisce about the good old days. The interview went just a bit long, I’m afraid, about 40 minutes, actually, but I think you’ll find it’s well worth listening to. I also caught up with some of the Aussie riders as well and thoroughly enjoyed chatting with our living legend of road racing, Kevin Curtin, still fast and hungry after all these years.
I knew that I would have to get the bulk of the interviews done on the Thursday/Friday as Saturday with Qualifying is always way too intense for the riders to be able to relax and chat. Fortunately I was able to do this as well and so was also able to watch the enthralling sessions where grid positions were decided. Surprisingly, given that his new Ducati Panigale was 15km/h down on top speed compared to the Aprilias, the Alstare #1 Carlos Checa, took pole. It was to be the only bright spot for the team for the weekend. Both riders had crashed in the one session in practice, giving the mechanics a huge rebuild job to do but #2 rider, Ayrton Badovini crashed again in practice on Saturday morning, injuring his leg and ruling himself out for the weekend.
Cruising around the pits you meet and see all sorts of people and it’s always nice when somebody comes up to you and says hello and identifies themselves. Sitting down at a table at which 6 people already sat in the canteen, one of the occupants said to me, “You’re Phil Hall, aren’t you?” I said I was and was surprised to find that the speaker was one of my Facebook friends with whom I regularly converse. Don’t know how he recognised me because, up till that point, we’d never met in person. Also noticeable around the pits was current WSBK champ, Max Biaggi, on location working at his new job as commentator for Italian TV. After failing totally to get an interview with him in 2012, I was delighted to be granted a small amount of the man’s time at the very end of the day.
I was gradually ticking all the boxes though, I’m sad to say, some of them avoided being ticked. Despite constantly trying to line up Aprilia riders, Sylvain Guintoli and Eugene Laverty, I had to wait till the presentation ceremonies to get “sound bite” interviews. Good but not as good as I’d have hoped. Marco Melandri seems to have assumed the Biaggi mantle of being unavailable to the press and, despite the best efforts of PR people from BMW, Danilo and Britta, I missed out on a one-on-one with him as well. As minute or two at the presentations was as good as it got and Marco, obviously in great pain by that stage, was obliging but anxious to be out of there.
Speaking of Ron Haslam, I was also privileged to be given a copy of Ron’s book, personally autographed by both Ron and Leon as a souvenir. Awesome.
Some “spotteds”. Former Aussie international, Vic Soussan and current international, Cam Donald (he sporting a Ned Kelly beard). Troy Bayliss flew down from Taree to catch up with his Ducati buddies but it was only a quick trip and he was on his way to the airport again. He did apologise for not having the time to chat, however.
For every good story there is a bad luck one and the horror weekend belonged to one of my favourite Supersport riders, South Africa’s Sheridan Morias. I had interviewed Sheridan last year and he remembered me when I went to his pit box and asked him how it was going. truth be told, the body language already told me that it wasn’t going well. “Dreadful, Phil (he remembered my name)” was the reply, “I’ve blown up 5 engines this weekend.” FIVE????? Yes, his two, plus three that he’d been able to borrow from other Honda teams.
What can you say in a situation like that? I wished him all the best and escaped. Later I heard the explanation. All 5 engines were brand new and all from the same supplier. It seems there is a blanking plate that goes in the oil supply system and it has two holes in it, one large and one small. The large hole delivers oil to the oil lines that feed the bottom end of the engine and the smaller hole acts as a breather (this is how it was explained to me). Unfortunately, as a consequence of what seems like dumb design to me, the plate can be fixed to the engine in two ways (it is reversible) and, as luck would have it, the plate had been affixed the wrong way round in all five engines. The effect of this was to starve the bottom end of oil and cause the bearings to overheat and seize. A manufacturing/assembly snafu that is going to cost somebody dearly when the culprit/s is identified. Sheridan was able to go out in qualifying but, with zero setup time, his times were depressing and he qualified at the back of the grid. Come race day the story was pretty much the same and, despite finishing, Sheridan left PI with no points. A dreadful start to the season.
