The Green Light Nationals was our first race meeting since October 2018 and our first race without Barry Eastman.

Long time friend of Lorcan’s Mick Bisson stepped in to help with clutch duties and we set up our pit on Friday night in strong winds. As the M&W ignition box had failed at the test day in July we elected to run with inductive ignition instead of CDI.

Saturday morning the wind had not eased and was variously reported as a 20-35mph headwind with stronger gusts. There was no scrutineering and limited spectating due to virus restrictions.

We put in 3 runs of 8.4, 7.6 and 6.92 @ 195mph, with a couple of other starts aborted due to rider error. The last run did not count for qualifying due to a previous false start, which left us qualified as #2 with the 7.6 behind Stu Crane’s 7.1.

After the first run we found that some bolts had backed out of the clutch pressure plate and worn their heads away allowing the plate to warp. The two Micks worked on a solution throughout the day, including Mick H taking the plate home for skimming which he completed around midnight on Saturday.

Sunday morning the wind had eased somewhat, but the inlet cam broke on the first burnout, bending two inlet valves and putting us out of the running. The cam was about 30 years old, being one of Brian Johnson’s old ones.

Overall though we were happy with the bike’s progress as the turbo speed sensors are now working properly, their speeds are where we want them to be and we can dial them up each run until we reach our previous performance level.

We are out again at “Not the European Finals” 11th-13th September which in the absence of the Euro Finals is a national meeting, so we will be in the Funnybike class instead of Top Fuel.