For the last meeting of the year Team Eddy’s travelled to Mallory Park for the annual International Sidecar Festival. We were supposed to be taking the Formula 2 and the classic, but due to the mad rush getting the 1040cc engine back in the classic we decided against the F2.
We arrived at Mallory park late on friday night to find the paddock absolutely rammed, i’d not seen this many sidecars at the festival in years!
We woke up Saturday morning to cold, damp, miserable weather which was to be expected at Mallory at this time of year. we got signed on and scrutineered and was all set to go. We went out in qualifying and things didn’t go all that well. We had hardly any bottom end power and I couldn’t get the wheel spinning enough to get us out of the corners. We qualified in a disappointing 4th, we were quite upset with this to be honest given that we are the current CRMC lap record holders.
We didn’t have the correct jets for the 1040 engine, which was why are bottom end power was so crap, we just had to make do with what we had. The first race didn’t go exactly to plan either, we got a dreadful start and ended up about half way down the field, we followed Ian Mcghee and Roger Holmes through Edwina’s and into the esses. Roger fell out at the esses and we only just missed him, this cause Ian to run head first into the tyre wall and the red flags came out. It was a horrible accident to witness but thankfully the pair of them were ok apart from a couple of broken bones. The race was re started and we got the same crap start, we now had a lot of catching up to do…. we were making our way through the field quite nicely and just as we started to get in a bit of a rhythm oil pissed out of the breather all over me and my handles. Ed hadn’t noticed and I was slipping about all over the place at one point at Gerrard’s my legs were dangling and I just managed to pull myself back in, I’d now had enough so tapped Ed but he kept on going, so I carried on slipping and sliding for another four laps before we took the chequered flag in third place. I gave Ed a bollocking when we got to Park Ferme, put it this way Icertainly didn’t mince my words about sliping and sliding for four laps!!!! We got on the podium and received a lovely trophy each so all was not lost.
The next race was pretty much the same as the first one only without the oil. we got a terrible start again and had to fight our way through the field. this time, a bit more gracefully though!
Sunday brought more miserable cold weather but we had been working on the bike on saturday night in hope that we could get a better start. The bottom end gremlins seemed to have almost disappeared on the warm up lap so I was very pleased. We lined up on the grid for the race, Ed knocked it into gear when the lights came on and our bike was trying to go, Ed managed to hold it on the brakes until the lights went out but my hand went straight up. I knew the clutch had gone and knew we wouldn’t be getting off the line in a hurry and wanted to alert the ten or eleven bikes behind us. We eventually got going after the entire field had passed us and now we had a lot of catching up to do. We made our way through the field, creating gaps if there wasn’t one there! I had my work cut out too, I knew we would have no drive coming out of the corners as we didn’t have a clutch so I was trying to get the back wheel spinning up everywhere, I was bloody knackered by the end of it. We took the chequered flag in fourth place and were both quite pleased given the circumstances.
For the last race of the day we did a little bit ore tweaking to see if we could try and get the clutch to hold out for another ten laps, it was a risk, but one that we felt we had to take. we got off the line perfectly this time and I thought we were going to have a good race with the front runners….. we almost did. Coming into the hairpin on the second lap I noticed Ed missing a lot of gears and again we had no drive coming out of the corners, the clutch hadn’t held out. We dropped back from the front runners and had a lonely race to finish in third place.
We were both fairly content with how the weekend had gone, it’d have been nice to have a few battles but you can win them all. I received a lovely trophy for highest placed female over the weekend which was pleasing.
2011 preparations have already started so I’ll keep you all updated over the winter.
Vics 
