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KNOCKHILL 29/30 SEPTEMBER 2007

It’s that time already – the last meeting of the Scottish Championship 2007 including the prestigious Jock Taylor Memorial Sidecar Race, the highlight of the Scottish sidecar racing calendar. We headed off as usual on Friday night with a skeleton crew as the boys had work commitments that would delay them till Saturday. As a result we decided not to put the awning up till morning, much to Bob’s disgust! Saturday started a little cold and misty but cleared to give us a fine day. We set up the awning and unloaded the rest of the gear before checking that the bike was ready for practice in the afternoon. There were 17 sidecars entered for the meeting, including Ben/Tom Birchall and Stuart Muldoon/Stuart Graham who compete at World Championship level, this would certainly up the pace.

We set out for the first practice but found we were struggling to get down the gear box. Conditions were cold and we went grass tracking at the hairpin as one of the slides went a bit too far. Back on track and carried on for a couple of laps before pulling back into the awning. Just as we pulled back into the awning a horrible rattle came from the engine. We fired it back up hoping to have imagined it – we hadn’t! We took the fairing off a large rock lay on the undertray, a reminder of where we had been. Kerr reckoned a stone had been sucked into the airbox and fallen into the engine as we turned into the awning.

We had planned an end of season meal at the Saline Hotel for the team but the engine change took priority. We phoned in a takeaway and the boys got stuck in:

All hands to the pump engine out – Saturday night

Alan, Bob, and Shaun (thanks to Gary for his assistance) had the engine changed over in record time. We were ready to go again for Sunday. Unfortunately, we were not able to get signed on and scrutineered on Saturday night so it was an early start on Sunday morning. The weather was great and brought out the crowds to watch. We went to go out for the 5 minute warm up but the outfit would not go into gear at all. A slack wire on the Quickshifter was the problem and quickly sorted before qualifying. The gear selection problem from the previous day had not gone however, and getting down the box under hard braking at the hairpin and Duffus dip was proving difficult and we didn’t get a good grid position.

At lunchtime the Scottish Sidecar Racing Club had taxi runs round the circuit to raise funds for the club. 40 people signed up to go out for a hurl. The only problem being that some did not have their own leathers and some passengers had to donate their suits on the spot to keep it going. All the people came back with big smiles on their faces so hopefully we will have some potential candidates for the chair next season as a result.

Colin Gibson (icracing) donates suit to taxi passengers!

Bill Davie’s wife deserves a special mention as she was sponsored to go out in the chair with Bill and raised £1000 for the Benevolent Fund.

Racing started after lunch but the cold weather was catching people out and accidents in the solo races were starting to slow procedures up.

Sidecars waiting for racing to resume

The first sidecar race was a round of the Scottish Championship. Unfortunately, the sidecars were to suffer the same as the solos and on a cold track Gordon Shand couldn’t hold his line at the bottom of Duffus dip and slid into Stuart Muldoon (foreground left above). Stuart Graham, Muldoon’s passenger got his arm crushed between the outfits and the race was stopped in the second lap. The restart was less eventful and we all managed to finish safely securing 13th. The second race seemed to take ages to come round and we tried to work out what was causing the gear selection problem. A few adjustments were made to the Quickshifter alignment to see if that would cure it. Further accidents in the solo races were causing schedule problems. As the event was focussing on sidecars some non championship solo races were regrettably sacrificed to keep the schedule on time. This meant that the second Scottish Championship race would be run, then one solo race, then the Jock Taylor next to finish the day. This would require a super quick turn around.

Kerr and Jen waiting to go out

We still had trouble getting gears which was quite frustrating. An unusually bad start set us to the rear of the pack. Over the next few laps we picked a few folk off to finish 9th. Then it was a dash back to the awning, Kerr out, petrol in, Kerr in and off again for the Jock Taylor. It was to be run over a reduced distance of 10 laps. It was very much a re-run of the first race, but without the accident. We were pleased to finish 13th with a couple of 59 second laps.

This must have been the latest we had ever finished a race meeting and by the time we had got back, out of the sidecar and our breath back half the officials had gone home! We had lots of visitors at the awning on Sunday wishing us well which was great – thanks to everyone for their interest and support. We finished the day with a surprise birthday cake for Kerrsty, Kerr’s daughter, who had come down for the weekend and was to celebrate her 18th the following weekend.

Best wishes to you all

Kerr and Jen

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