After the Springspeed Nationals in May we looked closely for the source of the misfire and found that the fuel pump was severely worn and unable to supply the pressure we run. With a good used spare in place we looked forward to putting in a decent performance at the three day Festival of Power meeting, postponed from its usual Easter date, but it was not to be.

A water leak from the ice tank, fuel leak, and an unintentional lane change in front of Jiri Lukes (sorry Jiri!) took care of three of our six qualifying chances. We missed one due to working on the bike, and pulled a red light when hot methanol fumes from the earlier fuel leak forced Lorcan to leave early. Which left us with one chance, at the final qualifying session of Saturday evening.

A decent burnout, wait for the green and get to the end of the track would see us in the eliminations, right? Wrong. On the launch a clutch component came loose (actually stripped the bolts holding it in place) depriving the clutch of CO2 pressure which holds the clutch pack together. Lorcan eventually limped the bike slowly over the finish line, but the Santa Pod timing gear had already timed out at 30 seconds and the run didn’t count.

It wasn’t all bad though, despite not making the eliminations. The red light run was something in the 6.7-6.9 range at 200+mph with turbo speeds encouragingly well under control and on only 45psi boost (compared to 60psi on our PB 6.56 run). Clutch slip was evident at the end of each gear too, due to the loose/leaking clutch component, so it would have been even quicker if everything had been functioning correctly.

Stu Crane was fast and consistent all weekend, a winning combination and a worthy winner! Congrats to Stu and Team Warpspeed! We know the Warpspeed team supported by Dan Wagner in the USA will be tough to beat in the Funnybike class this year, but we also know what we need to do for next time and look forward to it. Until then, keep storming!