As far as bad days go, today was a good, bad day. Despite not finding the lap times we had hoped for and TL Turbo having a bit of a whoopsie, our day was still very productive.
We would have put a lap time of around 1.00.5 as a pass mark for us today but we only achieved a 1.00.9 so we are a bit off where we had hoped to be at the end of free practice.
We stared the day with a little variation on our base FD-03 suspension setup to try deal with the bumps and off camber nature of Wakefield Park Raceway. We didn’t get a very good read onthis variation in FP1 because Tim suffered badly from arm pump and as such completed limited laps.
FP2 went pretty well and turned out to be our best session with Tim’s fastest lap of the day set in FP2. His arm pump was also not as bad in FP2 so that was very positive.
Using the data we gained in from FP1 and FP2 altered to setup for Fp3 in hope to make the bike more agile and reduce Tim’s arm pump even further. We also hoped it would help mid corner turning and lap time.
We used FP3 as a qualifying simulation bolting in a new tyre mid-session. Tim pushed on the new tyre, made a little mistake and tucked the front into turn 2. As far as crashes go, this one was bloody mint!! No damage to rider and only a few minor scuffs to the bike. The new BikePLast fairings we are trailing held up super well, especially as the crash was a pretty quick one. The bike was so undamaged Tim remounted and finished the session in P12
The final debrief for the day concluded the FP3 setup was a setup backwards and at this point in time we are not nailed on our setup for the weekend and also are not quite sure of the exact direction to head. HOWEVER!! We aren’t lost as we know the clear area were we suck and will stick to working on that in calculated setups.
We have 2 x 25min qualifiers and we are hoping to find an improvement of around 0.7secs by the end of the day. Let’s see what happens.
Thanks to:
Jake Drew, Harley Side, Josh Schembri, Mick Large
TL Constrictions, Yamaha Racing Developments
SBS Brakes, DNA High Performance Filters, Kenma Australia
Pirelli MotoAus, RK Chain, Cykel Products
The Grinning Dingo Aus
