Treasure Racing FIM Sidecar Report: Magny Cours & Season Wrap-up
Treasure Racing Take 6th In The 2010 FIM Sidecar World Championship
by Dewy
The final round of the FIM Sidecar World Championship was held at Magny Cours France in association with the Bol Dor 24 Hour race, Australia’s Adam Treasure and Darren Dewhurst of Treasure Racing were there to finalize their challenge on the World Championship and attempt to improve their world ranking.
The track at Magny Cours is not often used as a motorcycle race venue for sidecars and therefore created an unusual scenario in that only a few riders, passengers or teams had actually competed on this track. This fact alone pointed towards there being many unexpected results; add in the highest number of entries for the sidecar field for the year (26) with a large number of French Wildcards with more knowledge of the circuit than the regular World Championship, non French, contenders and the weekend promised to be eventful.
Going into the final round of the FIM Sidecar World Championship, Adam & Darren are in 7th place in the Championship on 37 points, equal with Jacob Rutz and Ueli Waffler (37 points). Both teams, in turn, just 2 points behind Janez Remse and Jamie Biggs who are in 6th place in the Championship on 39 points. Scott Lawrie and James Neeve are an outside chance at jumping up in the standings from their 9th place and 31 points if they have a good meeting at Magny Cours.
With the Bol Dor 24 hour event starting on Saturday afternoon and running until Sunday afternoon the Sidecar World Championship race was held on Saturday, so most teams rolled into Magny Cours on Wednesday to setup in preparation for Thursdays 1st free practice. As seems to be the normal here in Europe this summer, rain followed Treasure Racing all the way from their base in Ludinghausen, Germany late Tuesday night until they arrived in Magny Cour Wednesday afternoon and it continued to rain until mid morning Thursday which created a damp track for the Sidecar teams to use as their 1st adventures onto the interestingly fast but technical layout of the circuit. The track surface was damp, but not excessively wet, but still offered very little in the way of grip and for most teams the session could only really be used as an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the direction and layout of the track. Not a lot could be achieved in learning braking markers or entry and exit points for fast lap strategies at this stage, though at the finish of the session the boys found themselves 9th fastest while riding on slicks in the tricky damp conditions
Friday morning’s 1st timed qualifying session was held in much different, drier, conditions to the previous day. Adam & Darren applied their usual analytical approach to learning another new track, this time for both of them, their lap times were unfortunately quite a lot off the expected qualifying and race pace, but with the 20 minute session only having just begun and a 2nd session still to come in the afternoon there was plenty of time to pick up the pace. As with all new tracks, each lap completed tends to be faster than the last as braking markers are extended and finding better lines through each corner are learned and therefore Treasure Racings lap times were always reducing until disaster struck on just their 5th lap when Adam could no longer find the gear lever under his foot due to the mounting bracket that holds the gear lever to the engine breaking off after months of torturous use became to much for the bracket. With a welder required to repair the problem the boys were left with no other option than to pull out of the 1st qualifying session early and miss valuable track time, leaving the qualifying session early meant that they had only managed to qualify in 25th position.
Repairs were made to the gear lever and with a mounting plate borrowed from Pekka Paivarinta & Adolf Hanni; the No 38 sidecar was ready for Friday’s Afternoon qualifying session 2 with just a small amount of time to spare. Now way behind the 8 ball as far as track time goes Adam and Darren pushed as hard as they could as they battled to improve on their earlier qualifying time, by the end of the session Treasure Racings lack of track time was apparent with the boys posting a qualifying time that had them starting from 15th place on the grid. With a lot of the French wildcards holding grid positions in front of them, the boys had their work cut-out for them for Saturday’s race, their only salvation being that Janez Remse/Paul Knapton and Jacob Rutz/Rita Aeberli had qualified even further down the grid. The Lawrie/Neeve team had qualified in 9th after Lawrie found some good speed and lines throughout his qualifying time on the track.
On the Friday night before the final race of the 2010 World Championship Adam and Darren performed the 1st bit of unexpected maintenance to their Suzuki power plant when they removed the clutch to look for a reason behind some previously un-noticed notchiness in the gear box, with no apparent reason found to explain a notchy gear box the extra curricular work was put down to some nerves and paranoia after the broken gear lever mount earlier in the day had drawn focus to the gearbox.
Saturday’s final race for the 2010 World Championship was shaping up to be an interesting one with Pekka Paivarinta & Adolf Hanni requiring just 6 points to tie up the championship ahead of Tim Reeves & Gregory Cluze who were starting on pole and had a huge determination to win in the hope that Paivarinta & Hanni would not finish giving them the points they needed to steal the title away from the Finish/Swiss pairing. Treasure Racing’s battles to improve their final world ranking were just as serious to the boys from Australia.
For Saturdays 15 lap race, Adam & Darren got a great start, but found themselves boxed in going into the double left sweeper, turns 1 & 2, and still could not get any clear track by turn 3’s big sweeping right, everywhere they looked there were bikes blocking almost all passing attempts that could be made by Treasure Racing, by the completion of the 1st lap the boys found themselves basically holding ground around 14th or 15th place. Half way round the track for the 2nd lap the race was red flagged due to an incident at the last right turn before the start/finish chicane, whilst on the 1st lap Remse & Knapton rolled their sidecar and would no longer be able to continue for the restart of the race. With the DNF of Remse/ Knapton, Adam & Darren just needed to finish in front of Rutz/Aeberli and in 12th place or higher to move up in the World Championship standings, but the pace of the Lawrie/Neeve team had now become a point of concern and Treasure racing needed to keep them insight, or at least finish within 5 places of the Scottish/British team to keep in front of them in the Championship standings.
The restart of the race had Adam and Darren driving hard off the start line and with lessons learned from the 1st start Adam made his way to the outside of turns 1 & 2 to pass several bikes through the double left before swapping to the outside again for the long right turn 3 to pass Milan Spendal & Peter Hill around the outside. The boys found themselves in a group with Mike Rosher/Jonathon Huet, Andy Peach/Charlie Richardson, Scott Lawrie/James Neeve and Josef Moser/Manfred Wechselberger. Many times throughout the next 3 laps Treasure Racing swapped places with Mike Rosher under brakes only to be passed again at another part of the track, until the 4th lap when the red flag made yet another appearance due to another sidecar rolling over after driving over spilt oil on the track.
The race was restarted one more time, for this restart Treasure Racing started from 11th place on the grid due to the race being run as a “2 part race” and all the confusion that creates, with all teams starting from their race positions from lap 3 of the previously interrupted race. Adam got away to another brilliant start and again Treasure Racing found themselves battling with Moser/Wechselberger and Lawrie/Neeve, with all 3 teams having a turn in front of their own little battle for track position, be it for 9th, 10th & 11th, with the race shortened to a total of 8 laps (3 laps (part 2) then 5 laps (part 3)) after the time taken to clean up the track between 2 restarts had set the program way behind schedule. Adam & Darren passed Lawrie/Neeve under brakes, Lawrie then put a heavy passing move straight back on Treasure Racing involving some contact of the 2 sidecars in the process, but this was all good fun and made for exciting racing, eventually both teams moved passed Moser/Wechselberger and cleared out to finish the 3rd part of the race with Lawrie/Neeve in 8th and Treasure racing in 9th place on track but when overall race times were taken into account Moser/Wechselberger just edged out Treasure racing for 9th over all, Adam & Darren dropped back to a 10th place finish overall for the combined “2 part race”.
Finishing in front of Rutz/Aeberli, and within 2 places of Lawrie/Neeve gave Adam and Darren the points they needed to move from equal 7th to finish the year in 6th place overall in the 2010 FIM Sidecar World Championship.
Adam and Darren would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Pekka Paivarinta & Adolf Hanni for winning the 2010 Sidecar World Championship, this is Pekka’s 2nd World Championship, his 1st coming in 2008, and this is Adolf’s 1st World Championship victory after competing in the championship for 28 years, so persistence eventually does pay off for some.
Congratulations Guys!
Adam and Darren would also like to thank Albert Raesfeld from B&R Tire Services and Henry Schwaten for their hard work in the pits and pit wall with the lap board. Adam was always able to be confidant the bike was well prepared and constantly aware of his position on the track and what was needed to achieve the teams best World Ranking so far due to these guys’ efforts.
Finally, The Mick DeWith Performance GSXR 1000 power plants, of which there were 2 for the year were absolutely flawless and at this meeting they were perfect yet again, heaps of power on tap and never an issue, the so called notchy gearbox issues never amounting to anything more than nerves and paranoia as mentioned earlier and the possible need to keep busy doing something the night before the race to ensure a good result in the final race, a distraction if you like. Sorry Mick, how could we have ever doubted your bulletproof engine building skills!
The first free practice on Friday was used to refresh Adam’s memory of the layout of the circuit and introduce Darren to the fast and flowing nature of the track. At the completion of the two qualifying sessions, Adam and Darren had qualified 13th on the grid.
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