Rooker Racing : August 2016

The week running up was the start of the problems, a crazy busy week and on top of that Dad had to fly over to the UK for the funeral of our great grandmother Ruby who passed away just two weeks before, a sad time for the family.

The bikes were loaded up on Thursday night - and the week prior Lewis GRC had been treated to a good going over, cleaned up and seemed to be in good shape....

Friday after school everything was in place and we went directly from school to garage, changed to the pumpkin and headed on to Skövde.
On route we were trying to get supplies for the weekend and fuel for the bikes, but a lot of places were closed on a Friday night -welcome to rural Sweden!

We arrived at the track at around 8 pm after a 4 hour drive.
We set up camp and looked forward to the weekend, no practice on Friday, we checked the weather and were a little concerned that it might rain in race day Sunday

Practice and qualifying went really well on Saturday, the weather was great and the times were good. Lewis picking up the pace with each Practice and Travis taking the fastest times in Junior A - It was looking good for Rooker racing....

We headed to the local swimming pool on Saturday evening to clean up and have a swim around and slide the flumes, then took dinner at Olearys.

SATURDAY night we messed with the RC plane, car and quad copter, then tucked in the combi-camp and had another chilly night . we were freezing!

Sunday - Morning . we woke up to misty and cold day, with clouds and a big chance of rain.

Junior A was out first as usual, 8am practice - It was dry and despite continued problems with lewis´s grc we had a good session.

Then just a minute before the 1st race the rain started to fall, at first we thought it would be ok, then it began getting harder, Åke called a wet race and gave us 10 minutes to change to wet tires, it was a panic, dad trying hard to fix the wet weather tires on to Travis´s bike, Lewis had to ride with what he had, there was no time for anything else,
The front wheel went in with almost no issues, by now there was only 5 minutes to start time, juggling two riders and two bikes was frantic, soon Lars Åke was over and giving dad a hand as he could see the frantic condition dad was in! The rest of the riders were out and still they were trying to get the rear wet wheel to go into the DM, after a lot of messing with changing hubs, sprockets and brake discs it was in, but by now the group had warmed up and were on the grid! Travis went out visibly upset, Lewis tried to make it our but the bike was refusing to start despite the help from Omar (dad to Ian - Junior a racer) so now we had lewis out and Travis about to start form the pits, what a mess and stress!
The race started and Travis joined after the had all passed, he sped off, 1st time on wets and riding in rain, he started to pick them off and then slid of pushing too hard at a left hander, it was all too much, upset at the situation he came in to the pits, Race was over - he was extremely upset and headed to the bus, helmet on and raging! Lewis meanwhile was as usual in good spirits. Dad was a bit pissed off too!

race #1 lewis DNS Travis DNF what a f#*king mess !

It took half an hour for the anger to simmer down, then we could talk

we came to a conclusion... we need to have wet tires ready to fit on both bikes and to be able to do it in under 10 minutes....
YEAH that does sound impossible right !

A letter to Svemo is totally on the cards regarding these unreasonable rules regarding times to change to wets - it seems they don't take in to account a situation such as ours - when you are a single parent that has two young riders in the same junior class ? Do they want more riders to compete in the Junior class? do they want a good safety record? If the answer is yes to these two questions then they need a rethink. We were robbed !

Dad tried to cool his anger and set about focusing on trying to get lewis´s bike running, but to no avail, the bike wouldn't start and finally locked up - we think the piston ring broke and jammed in the cylinder. (later we found out it was just the starter)

Race 2 - all to play for!

Lewis was out of the race because we couldn't get the bike to run, so we concentrated on getting Travis ready for the race, filled up fuel, checked the wheels were in place and in line, tightened bolts, checked the hubs bolts etc etc - everything was in good order, well it seemed so.

5 minutes before the race we warmed the bike up, all good, Travis had got over the 1st race disaster and was looking forward to racing again, even more determined, the rain was still coming down. He got out to the start line with everyone else this time, did a sighting lap, and was at the grid in the pole position that he earned the day before.

The flag dropped and the race began, almost immediately you could see he didn't have the pace? what was going on? soon the others came by, one by one, his bike was faltering? but why ? and then the seasoned mini-moto dads in the pits told me!

"THE BIKES TAKING IN WATER"

"THE AIR FILTER IS GETTING SWAMPED" !

F?%K !!!

what a shame, it was hell watching him ride around just getting slower and slower, after a few laps of poor running he came into the pits, crying, upset and frustrated - he knew the race was lost now, William had stormed away like it was a dry race and we had learned another very costly mistake, all too late... Travis went back out and nursed the poor bike to a 5th place and at least salvaged some points, but what a shame... when the race ended he was so upset and inconsolable for at least 20 mins he was fuming in the pumpkin.

we heard sympathetic phrases like "you cant win them all" "that's racing" but really we didn't want to hear it, we lost and f?%ked up big time, it was a disaster.....

We packed up, and tried to figure it out..... but we were gutted... except Lewis who made us all laugh at his take on things, Lewis has a big heart and is the funny man that you all need in times like these, comments like " I could have gone faster then you Travis" lightened the mood in a way only Lewis can do.

We waited for the awards, Travis congratulated William on his victories and was reminded by him that he had just become the leader in the championship, I admired the way Travis took it, I could see the reserved nature and the way this was just making him stronger.

We said our good byes and quite quickly got going and headed home, by the time we got home some 5 hours later we had accepted it all and the smiles were back on our faces, we might even start to laugh about this soon...

so we began planning the final meeting, what we would do differently, we will have the tires ready, we will have the plastic airboxes ready and we will have a way of changing both bikes to wet weather in under 10 minutes, its all down to the final round, lets see what happens in Borlange .....

"in the words of chumbawamba - you get knocked down you get up again"