Ulster Grand Prix, 17th & 18th August 2001

Wednesday 15th

Packed the van up on the Tuesday (14th) night with the help of Keith McKay whose bike I was taking, he had also been accepted for the Newcomers race........well it was actually the Open National Race, as calling it the Newcomers Race was complete bollocks...........They classed you as a Newcomer if you haven't competed at the Ulster GP before, which is fair enough, but most of the blokes had done the Dundrod 150 at least once, which is held on the same circuit............. that's like competing at the TT then going to the Manx GP and entering the Newcomers......I think it should be the Manx way of thinking that to be a Newcomer you should be a Newcomer to the course. Anyway, it was oversubscribed, with 80 entries, so they were going to have a qualifying time to determine the 72 places on the grid which were going to be let off in 3 waves of 24 at 30 second intervals.

Decided on taking my van as it is larger than Keith's Toyota Hi-ace and we could get more in, but we were using Keith's ticket, it was good of him to let me go with him......Keith's missus, Janice came with us along with my mate Terry, and we had Jammed our scooters in the back of the van so that we all had some form of transport, with Keith and Janice using my van. Caught the 1500 hrs Seacat to Belfast on Wednesday (15th) and three hours later we were in Ireland.

We were staying at separate B'n'B's, so, Terry and I got out at our B'n'B and unloaded the Scoots, first thing that we did was fasten a Manx Flag to the back of each of them, so we could fly our colours everywhere we went, then went for a lap of the Dundrod Circuit before it got dark. It was exactly 11 miles from our B'n'B to where we joined the circuit at Quarterlands, then another 4 miles or so from that point of the course to the paddock.

Thursday 16th

Started lapping the course on the scooters in the morning to try and familiarise myself with it and did about 10 laps, the course is 7.5 miles long and looks extremely fast, for this year they had widened the corner at Quarterlands with kerbs to try and reduce the speed around it, and they had revised the chicane on the last bend before the start finish straight. After all the laps on the scooter (a fastest lap of 10min 45sec) I was getting to know what bend followed what, but wasn't kidding myself that it would look, oh so different again at 150mph plus......plenty bumpy in parts too, although all in all it was a pretty good surface. Had a word on Jason Griffiths and he agreed to take me (and Keith) for a couple of laps in a car, and he made a few good points, then after that Milky Quayle turned up on a 'Flying Brick' (a BMW K series 1000cc motorbike) so jumped on the back of him and went round for a couple of laps, until rain stopped play..........rode back to the B'n'B on the scooter in the pissing rain and it conked out 3 times, got it going again and as soon as the roads were less wet it was ok.

Friday 17th - Practise Day

Got to the track around 0830hrs, it was well damp and Misty, visibility wasn't too good, but a couple of locals said it would clear up.........Janice met us at the gate to tell us where in the paddock Keith had parked, so parked the scoots up alongside the van and put the bike and my kit through scrutineering. The paddock for an international event is a complete joke........its all an uneven rocky surface one side and muddy the other, with all the top teams having the best spots.

First practise was for the Newcomers and that was arranged for 1200hrs, but first we had to go to a briefing. It was said there that you had to do 5 laps to qualify and in two of those laps you had to get beneath the qualifying time (yet to be determined). They also said that you would be let out for practise in groups of 8, at about 20 second intervals, behind an experienced rider, in my case Adrian McFarland, and you had to follow him for 2 laps and if you passed him before you completed those two laps they would disqualify you, as he was there for our benefit to try and show us some lines etc.......So as it was only a half hour practise session, the maximum amount of laps you were going to get in with the time allotted was 6 and with 2 of those slowish laps behind the instructor left only 4 laps to try and qualify in, so it wasn't going to be easy.

I started at the back of our group and a couple of the blokes in front of me were letting the experienced rider get away a bit more than I was liking, so I decided on catching him up and be the first rider behind him, it was not long before we caught up with the group that started in front of us, so we had to slow down to let them get away again, then we caught them up again, and again, had to knock it off, going over the start/finish line Terry was timing me and David 'Jamie' Jamieson had turned up and he was swinging my pit board out.......as I started the second lap it said 4' 55 (4 mins 55 seconds), the next lap it was 4' 54. two laps with the instructor done so passed him and started trying a bit harder, still didn't really know where I was going and its difficult to hold the throttle open in 6th gear going through trees round a blind bend in the road, this is where knowing the road like the back of your hand is a hell of an advantage........ obviously! Next time round the pit board said 4' 36, so getting quicker, I was still being extra cautious, until I had a bit of a fright at the blind corner at the top of Deers Leap.........When you leave the corner at Leathemstown, it's a straight downhill then uphill with a blind right hand kink taken flat out in 6th gear then I was going down 2 gears to hit the apex of this corner, feathering the throttle, and as soon as I was round it, it was back on the gas and up to 6th again, then down a hill whilst popping a wheelie.........only this time round I hit a false neutral and got to the corner faster than I had been before............ and as I had already started tipping the bike into the corner, I didn't want to change gear in case I locked the back wheel up so, had a gulp and flung her in, to my amazement (and relief), got round okay as the road seemed to open up more than you thought, so now I knew I could take it in 5th, although still feathering the throttle while doing it, caught up with a bloke riding a CBR600, with the number 8 on it and tailed him for a bit, felt pretty comfortable at the speed we were doing, when we were on the approach to Quarterlands we caught up with a bloke on a 250, and the No 8 rider dove up his inside, but I didn't, tried to get past him straight away but he blocked me more than once, until I went around the outside of him at Irelands Corner, the other bloke had got away so I got my head back down and carried on, lost a few seconds there ......... ....finished that lap and Jamie swung the pit board out for the time of the previous lap and it said 4' 24, so better again........... ...........when I got to the bottom of the Flying Kilometre the red flag had come out, so tootled back to the start line and saw that there had been a crash at Flow Bog, a corner that tightens up more than you think and really pushes on the front tyre and it can easily let go, its also really easy to approach this corner in the wrong line, as I found out on one occasion, through this section I was more cautious than anywhere else, as I didn't fancy it at all, it was also damp in places, and knew I was losing loads of time through here, got back to the paddock and found that my last flying lap before the flag came out was 4' 15 and I had qualified 17th......so in the first wave of 24.........which I was happy about, but was unhappy that was all the practise that I was going to get, the session ended prematurely because of the crash. The Bloke who was riding No 8 (a bloke called Leigh-Pemberton) qualified 8th with a lap time of 4' 11, so I lost 4 seconds by being blocked by that 250 rider. Lots of the other riders had entered other races and there was a practise for each of them, and at the end of the day they had managed 20-30 laps compared to my 5, and their lap times had tumbled as would have mine had I been able to practise more. To put it into perspective, when we all had just done the 5 laps after the first practise I had out qualified a Manx GP winner and regulars like Keith Townsend on his 996 Ducati (24th) and Mark Parrett on his ZXR750 Kawasaki (34th), so was well happy about that at that stage of the day. Milky had qualified 7th only 5 seconds ahead of me, which I was well surprised about until I went to see him and he told me his clutch on the RC45 was slipping..... so he went out on his spare one!!!!!!

The bike was covered in Flies and grime, but with the help of Terry we had it gleaming again, fuelled up, chain adjusted and lubed ready for the race tomorrow. Loaded it back in the van, along with Keith's' 750 Suzuki. The qualifying time had been set at 4' 47 and 27 riders hadn't made the cut, and one of them was Keith who was 4 seconds outside it, another Manx lad was Chris Dowling, who's bike had been misfiring, but they let him in the Newcomers Race as he achieved the qualifying time in the other practises....... I said to Keith to go to see Billy Nutt himself and plead his case that had he had more practise he would have been under the qualifying time as well.........turns out that he got the ok to start. I was keeping an eye on the practise times and saw the times of Townsend and Parrett, tumble each time they went out, and at the end of the day they were well quicker than me. I had decided beforehand that I was going to put new tyres on for the race but decided against it as I knew had I put them on I would push harder and I didn't know the track well enough to do that, and knowing that my tyres weren't new would keep me in check. I was just hoping that I could keep in the top 20 in the race, as my two targets for the day had been reached, with qualifying and being in the first wave of 24.

Saturday 18th - Race Day

Scootered to the track and got there about the same time as we had yesterday, the weather was a bit dull and overcast, the race was due to start at 1045hrs, earlier than yesterday's practise. Terry put the bike through scrutineering and I put my kit through, Keith wasn't happy because they said the were not going to let him out, but after a lot of arguing he got the OK. Checked the bike over and found that the water was low, filled up the radiator and found that there was a big hole in it........disaster........Keith had a go at soldering it, but it wouldn't stick.........disaster again.......found a welder in the paddock, so stripped the bike and whipped the radiator off, took it to the welder who put a large snot of weld on it.......hoped it would hold. Put it all back together 20 minutes before the race. Terry took my bike to the holding area, whilst I got my gear on and by the time I got there, I was one of the last on the grid. Sat on my spot in 17th......in the first wave of 24, ready for a 7 lap race, then we were let off in fours for the warm up lap, got to say its the fastest warm up lap I've ever been in, probably went faster in that than in the practise yesterday! I hoped that maybe I could tag along with some of the blokes in front of me as they had gone faster in qualifying, but on the other hand I wanted to be on my own and do my own thing and try and keep out of trouble. Was a little worried about Townsend and Parrett, who were starting 30 seconds behind me in the second wave, with the practise times they had ended up with yesterday, they should be able to reel me in after the third lap........but there was nowt I could do about that now. Noticed on the warm up lap how many people were watching, and couldn't believe it (turns out there was over 50 thousand!). The weather had improved greatly and the sun had come out and it turned out to be a top day. Was thinking that today, was the day I would have been making my Manx Grand Prix debut...................but here I was on the grid at the Ulster GP........

The flag was raised and we were off...........24 blokes jostling for position as we hurtled down the Flying Kilometre....... managed to pass a few and must have been in the top 10 or 12 at one point, till somebody barged his way in front of me on a bigger bike and I had to shut the throttle off to avoid him, didn't want to get involved in any fairing bashing at this stage and I needed to be in the right line for the corner as I still didn't have enough experience of the course to try it any other way. It all started to settle down a bit by the first bend, a bumpy left hander, as everyone started to take their position for the next bend which was a tighter right hander.....we were all in a 'train' so to speak, until some nobber tried to go around the outside........ he obviously forgot it was a tighter bend than he thought and he went straight into the hedge..........he bounced back into the middle of the road and it was absolute carnage...................

His bike immediately took down a couple of others and there was dust and smoke everywhere, thought at this point I was coming off too.......stood on the brakes and prayed for a gap and one opened up for me, I had aimed my bike at the side of the road that he had hit the hedge and hoped by the time I got there, they would all have slid to the other side......this worked for me, although I just missed a blokes head with my front wheel........saw the bloke on the No 8 CBR600 on the right hand side of me go straight into the bikes on the floor and he disappeared up the hedge and another guy sliding into the hedge trapped under a bike........I got through it completely unscathed and was the last person to make it through, and when I looked back saw some more pile in to the wreckage, now the road was completely blocked............knew for sure that they would definitely red flag it, and after the next corner, the marshals there hadn't realised what had happened, so I was waving at them to stop the race, which they did straight away.

Rode around for the rest of the lap shaking a bit..............that was a close one, and realised that I was lucky to get through it, but annoyed at the same time as most of the Newcomers needed more practise, and that's what happened when we didn't get it. Got back to my position on the grid and Tel and Jamie came over........there was a lot of enquiring going on, but you could see who had been involved, when the grid reformed.........the row in front of me had 3 riders missing, must have been 6 or 7 missing in total. The said over the tannoy that everyone had survived it, and nobody had life threatening injuries..........but they always say that. Was still shaking a bit.........but had to try and forget about it.

Waited for about half an hour before we went on another warm up lap, this time the race was reduced to 5 laps, the weather was still really good, sunny and hot.....The flag was raised and we were off again, felt like it was the same as before but this time I settled at the back of our group, the bikes in front kicked up loads of cement dust that was down at the point where the big crash had been.........I was stuck behind a bloke that was going steady, and stayed behind him for nearly two laps, until I decided he was holding me up, as by this time the other blokes in front had got away, got him at the Hairpin and was still really steady going through Flow Bog and the Quarry bends section but he never came back past. Got my pit board and it said 4' 16 ..........had a lot of trouble with the bike bogging down as the gearing was a lot different to what I was used to, and also because I was rolling it around the unfamiliar bends the revs were not what they should have been, The corners at Budore and Windmill were where this was happening every lap, but to be on the safe side I was being extra cautious, but after going through them I was thinking that I could take them loads faster than I was doing, and the drive up the hill to Jordan's Cross and through the trees to Wheelers was suffering..........after the third lap my board indicated 4' 12 and P12 (12th position on the road) so a little quicker again. Going into Ireland Corner on the fourth lap Parrett came past me, I followed him through Budore, but got Windmill all wrong because I was watching what he was doing instead of concentrating on what line I was in, lost loads of drive, then Townsend came booming past me on the big Ducati, followed him into Wheelers, then had a bit of a slide on the right hand corner there, so thinking that my tyre was going off........ just wanted to get to the finish...........crossing the line to start the fifth lap, my board said 4' 12 again, was disappointed it wasn't faster, but didn't really have my head around it. On the first left hander after the Flying Kilometre, the yellow flag came out, quickly followed by a Marshal jumping in the road with a red one, was ready to stop, and when I got round the next bend there was a bike spinning in the road and the rider ended up in a field at the same spot of the first crash........he got to his feet though, so thankfully he was ok. Noticed while I was stopped that the temperature was creeping up to 100C, and water was dripping out of the bottom of the bike so had to kill the engine....... ......the temperature still went up, so when given the all clear, started her up and headed around the track and back to the grid, the bike indicating 95C all the way. Was pretty sure that they were going to call it a result after 4 laps, which they did....... a good job because I couldn't have carried on anyway, as the radiator repair hadn't worked, but glad I had got to the finish OK. Turned out that I had finished 24th... (fastest lap of 4' 10)........out of 72 starters (54 finishers) after only 9 flying laps (including practise) which I was pretty gutted about to tell you the truth...........I reckon had I had the same amount of track time as the others and had everything else gone according to plan (like not getting the life frightened out of me in the pile up) I would have made the top 12. But live to fight another day I suppose................. Turns out Keith had a worse day than me, he had to pull in after the warm up lap because his Suzuki lost 4th gear.......so after all the hassle of getting on the grid he had to pull out anyway. Milky Quayle won the race from Gary Jess and Bruce Anstey... I was well chuffed for him, he was flying.

Packed up the van, when the bike had cooled down, with the help of everyone, then watched the rest of the races. The weather deteriorated and because of all the delays the last classic race was cancelled, felt sorry for all the blokes that never got to race, I would have been well pissed off to say the least. As we were staying till the Sunday, went into Moira Town and met fellow Manx Competitor John Crellin and his mate Pete, for a night out.

Keith picked us up in my van at around 1200hrs on Sunday (19th) and we loaded the scooters in.............300 miles done on them in 4 days!!!!.......Caught the 1830hrs Seacat from Belfast to the Island, and got to Peel at around 2145hrs, unloaded the van and reloaded all Keith's stuff into his..........then went to bed ............knackered.

So tune in next time for another very exciting, heart in the mouth, don't know where you're going, episode of Tommy Clucas Racing.........