Well, the third dose of my motorcycle racing overdose has been taken. Last weekend I spent 3 days at Eastern creek Raceway (I can’t ever see myself calling it by its new name) at the Barry Sheene Festival of Speed. As usual, it was a fabulous meeting, although a little less colourful due to the absence of Robbie Phillis. Robbie is in Germany at the moment helping his son, Alex, get ready for the 2013 German Superbike Championship. However, the racing was excellent and the usual stories of hard luck, delightful coincidence and last-minute snatching of success from the jaws of victory will be told for a long time to come.
Unfortunately, the Sheene always seems to bring with it a few really big accidents and this year was no exception. Lindsay Fagan, from WA, lost his sidecar passenger around the back of the circuit resulting in his outfit flipping over at speed. Fortunately, neither rider nor passenger were seriously hurt. The same cannot be said of one of my favourite riders, Taree’s Glenn Kelleher, who had a big get-off and badly broke his collar bone. Plating and pinning look like happening in this case. Shaun Giles was highsided off the Katana in a perplexing accident on the warm-up lap and Victoria’s Robbie Ruwoldt made a big mess of his gorgeous Harris Kawasaki in the second race of the day on Sunday.
It was great to see Alan Kempster, the double amputee road racer doing so well and the trade displays and club shows in the back of the pit area well and truly lived up to their usual high standard. Tex and Bundy, the pillioning dog were there doing their usual bit for charity and attracting their share of attention.
The Sheene always brings out some fascinating bikes, many of them just in the bike park as well as on the race track. Just trolling the parking area was a treat in itself. The Yamaha tent had some glorious two-stroke treasures including an absolutely original and unmolested TZ700 that was ridden around the Laverton track in 1976 for six laps by Giacomo Agostini and had never been started since.
We entered the Shadowfax in the Show and Shine on the Sunday and were tickled to be awarded 1st place for Racing Bikes post-1980, out third trophy for the bike. And, speaking of the ‘Fax, it is now at home in my garage from where it will eventually make its way to the National Motorcycle Museum at Nabiac on a permanent loan to the museum. I believe that this is the best course of action as they will look after it as least as well as I can and it will be somewhere where it can be seen by thousands of people rather than my garage where it will effectively be locked away most of the time.
A bit of a rest now, thank goodness. First weekend in April is the NSW Championships at ECIR and I’ll be attending on the Saturday only as I have to commentate at Canberra Speedway on the Sunday. What can I say, it’s a tough life, but somebody has to do it.
You can see my complete album of photos from the weekend on my Facebook site by following this link.