March 6th and 7th saw the running of the 2nd round of the 2021 Hartwell Championships at Mac Park and again the Race Center crew where in fine form. When you consider that out of the 16 races that featured a Race Center rider, we won 13 of them, it’s fair to say the team was in mega hot form at Mac Park.
For the 600 boys their life was not made easy by the Grinning Dingo’s Daniel Leonard who has been in hot form of late. Leonard snatched pole ahead of the Race Center boys meaning they had their work cut out on the ultra-hard to pass Mac Park circuit. With Daniel grabbing the hole shot in each race the boys had to dig deep to take the win. However, between Harley Side #95 (Saucy) and Luke Sanders #88 they managed to get the job done in each race.
Luke Sanders #88 - On the back of a fresh FD-03 setting update for his Yamaha R6, Luke had a stella weekend taking the win in 2 of the 4 600cc races plus a dominate win in the feature Greg Bailey Race by over 9 secs from teammate Harley Side. Luke also managed a fastest lap of 1.11.9 which is super impressive on a 600. It was great to see Luke back in form and he sighted great improvement in front end confidence with the new setting update.
Harley Side (Saucy) #95 – Saucy’s hot form continued, his performance was a clear signal that it wasn’t just the new surface at Broadford that has led to his pace increase. Saucy clocked a blistering 1.11.6! just 0.5 off the lap record, when you consider the short time Harley has been racing that is just phenomenal. Saucy took 2 outright wins plus 4 in class out of 4. He also followed Sanders home in 2nd in the Greg Bailey Feature Race. Saucy did have to work his way to the lead making some great passes along the way and really enjoying the battles with teammate Sanders.
Will Sharrock #88 – Will had a ripper weekend setting some really fast times aboard this Yamaha R6. Will didn’t quite have the pace over race distance of the leaders but still managed a 1.12.1 a 3rd and 3 4th places over the weekend. He did have a little tumble in the last race but in true Will still remounted to finish the race. On ya William!!!!
Jason Male #54 – In round 1’s race summary we reported Jason Male was back on the bike after a long layoff. Well, it seems to have done him the world of good!! Jason took 3 wins out of 4 races in the 600 Novice class, his first ever wins!!!!! Jason even lead most of race for before he ran out of puff in the last few laps to fall back to 2nd. Yet is was more than even to take out the round win and give him the current series lead in the Novice 600 class. Congrats mate!!!
Over to the 1000cc bikes and it was Flash Harry himself, Daniel DiNuzzo #45 that took 3 wins from 3 starts and pole position aboard his Yamaha R1 with fresh Race Center ECU Map and FD-02 suspension. Impressively Daniel is graded as a Non-Expert yet he still took pole and won each race outright against the Expert class. Danny D got down to an impressive 1.12.0!! However he decided to sit out the Greg Bailey Feature race sitting a potential lack of fitness 😊Danny D has been in the Race Center student pool for a little while now and it riding so great. Well done mate.
Daniel’s stablemate Joel Gilmore #11 had a weekend to forget unfortunately. He was riding awesome and mega fast lapping in the 1.11s. However he only managed to finish 1 race after having a couple of tumbles and some continued mechanical troubles. As much as it sucks for Joel his situation is a good advert for why keeping up a solid maintenance program on you race bike is so important. His run of mechanical issues has cost him a lot of great results over the past few meetings and must be frustrating for him. We hope to see things turn around for him soon.
Last but in no way least, Fergus Gibson #85 – We didn’t forget him!!! Ferg is racing his new KTM 890 in the Thunderbike class. He scored 2 wins and two 3rd places netting him 2nd overall for the round. Considering Fergo supposedly retired from racing over a year ago he is riding pretty great 😉. With the new bike Ferg was complaining of a few flat spots in the power delivery, so between round 1 and 2 we got the bike into Race Center HQ for tune. He was rapped with the result sighting a big improvement in the bikes power delivery.
Ferg declined to have his photo present in this report after hurting our win ratio so badly (this is a joke for anyone that doesn't get it and is offended)
All in all, a massively successful weekend. Well done team!! Thanks to all our supporters!
