We go moped racing

The Suzuki ran smooth to the finish line but promptly refused to start when we went to pack it in to the van to go home. It really is a state with 15 crashes taking their toll, but the day was so much fun that the team are already talking about doing it up and prepping it properly for next year’s race.

Budget racing just doesn’t get any more fun than this and all the money raised goes directly to charity.

HAVE YOUR SAY

It’s a rare thing that can get me out of bed at 5:30 in the morning, but the chance to compete in my first motorbike race was definitely one of them.

And this wasn’t just any old race round any old track, this was the event of the year – the six-hour endurance race that is The Supermotoped charity moped race. 33 teams on bikes no bigger than 50cc racing round a track made up of equal amounts of dirt and tarmac

Some people had spent a lot of time preparing their ‘peds for the race. Everything from custom made bikes that were clearly designed to win, to fake fur cover twist and goes hoping that comedy value would hold them up for six hours.

But we had opted to go down the cheep route – a Suzuki CS50 bought for £80 in the local free ads, complete with tax and MOT. With just the minimal preparation for the race – new spark plugs and tyres – we turned up at 7am for registration not really knowing what to expect.

By the time the 1 hour free practice session had finished we knew we were not going to be amoung the front runners, in fact we had pretty much the slowest bike there. And the superpole session confirmed it as we qualified for the start in second from last place.

The first hour of the race went well but then the inevitable happened, one of our riders crashed. Not only did he cash but he got run over by another bike and managed to break the throttle off the bars so the scoot simply wouldn’t go.

Back in the pits the next three hours were spent trying to fix the throttle so that we could get back out on track and clock up some more laps to add to our pretty small total.

Several times we thought we had it sussed and went back out on track only for another crash to leave the rider sitting with the throttle control in his hand. And just to complicate matters the CS50 was starting to suffer from fuelling problems and wouldn’t start.

The team were on the verge of calling it a day when running to the rescue came the mechanical genius that was Mark from Orange racing, the guy that would later win an award for his specially designed bikes that put a C90 engine in a DT50 frame.

Marc spent an hour with us getting the increasingly desperate twist and go back on the track, trying everything from changing the HT lead and coil to pouring WD40 and petrol directly in to the airbox.

And then the throttle broke again. That was when the idea of the day made it’s appearance.

The front brake on the CS50 was next to useless and was hardly being used. Both the front brake and the throttle were operated by a cable, so why not put the throttle cable on to the brake lever and use that to make the bike go. Genius. It worked and we were back on track, albeit to some stifled comments of ‘nutters’ and ‘what have they done’.

Thanks to Mark’s intervention the day was saved and we spent the remaining two hours circling the increasingly sodden track clocking up a total of 141 laps and putting us in 28th place out of 33.