BSEC Scooter Endurance Race Tside8 | FEATURE

Understaffed

SLUK Racing riders Iggy and Shaun both pre-booked to go to Weymouth rally before the BSEC dates were announced. This ‘new’ rally venue on the calendar also featured in the absence of other teams and riders from the July BSEC meeting at Teesside Karting.

Standing-in was fellow Medway lad Scott Swarbrick (pictured above); who had a long history in scooter racing before moving on to 125cc GP-class motorcycles. This still left us with only 3 riders to cover 8 hours of racing. Not ideal from a mathematical point of view, but manageable as long as everything went well with the scooter…

It still looked like SLUK weren’t going racing at teatime on Friday…

Under the cosh

I don’t really want to relive the trauma of the two weeks leading up to the event. Suffice to say that our old Quattrini M1-L (130cc) engine needed new engine casings if we were to run it again, as the main bearing had spun and was now extractable by simply swearing at a moderate volume. Meanwhile the new Quattrini M1-L 60-S (150cc) we are planning to use in the future was still missing the last few pieces.

Rather than break our new motor the first time out due to rushing, fixing the old engine with new SIP Evo smallframe engine casings seemed like the much easier option. The SIP Evo smallframe casings are beefed up in all the areas that traditionally need grinding or welding. That made some of the job of building a new race engine much easier than modifying yet another Piaggio case. I’ll do a full report on those in the coming weeks.

In the end the rebuild turned out to be anything but easy. After the third assembly, the clutch and gearbox still refused to play nicely. On Thursday we cancelled our entry and abandoned the event…

The frustration was overwhelming but without the same financial or time pressure we resolved to have another go at the solution. By Friday evening – having missed practice – the engine seemed to be running sweetly. After checking with Keith that it was still ok to re-enter, and that team members Scott and Alan (Diablo Moto) were prepared to drop their revised plans, we were back in the game. After 4 hours sleep we were out of the house by 4am to be in Teesside and on track for qualifying at 8:30am

Luckily, what 12-foot-tall Sticky lacks in athletic ability (second from left) he makes up for in the saddle…

The fairytale start

So, with all three pilots putting in decent lap times, SLUK Racing qualified in first place. Which was nice. Normally that spot is reserved for the Quattrini M200 of Hornet Racing but a hectic BSSO schedule also ruled them out.

Lined up behind were two more Vespas: the ever-improving Quattrini-powered PX of Team Numpties and Team Vespa on another of Norrie Kerr’s old SS90s. I love the fact that these sought-after sports smallframes are still being used around the track and not sat miserably in some Vespa collection, crying gearbox oil.

At the drop of Keith’s Ukranian start flag, Mikey Bonett snatched the lead from 4th place on the Dukes of Essex Lambretta, followed closely by the very fast but wild Brook Northey on the Numpties PX. They are both younger and nimbler running for a LeMans Start in sweaty leathers. That’s my excuse.

As I nipped past Brook I could hear a horrible, locked-up tyre screech behind which signalled that it was best to put in some quick laps to build a safety buffer. Meanwhile, Mikey slowly did the same to me.

It’s a long way

Endurance racing is exactly what it says on the tin. There’s no point in riding extremely fast if you crash or break the scooter. With the 33% increase in duration, it quickly became apparent that more teams have taken this on board and were pacing themselves to the end rather than setting off at Warp Factor Banjax. Every time the race distance increases the greater advantage is handed to the steady Tortoises rather than giddy Hares. The odds are still stacked in a Hare’s favour, but only really well-prepared Hares, not the reckless ‘bin it or win it’ type.

Strategy is key. It’s not rocket science to realise that it’s best to keep the time in the pits to a minimum, so the bigger the fuel tank and the fewer the rider changes you do, the better you should place at the end.

Ballistics, on the other hand. That’s rocket science.

Mid race mayhem

The great fun of endurance is that there’s always someone to race or overtake because the track is small and there’s 23 other scooters around it being ridden with varying levels of skill.

If you are canny then you take being overtaken on the chin and just ride at your comfortable lap pace. However, there are still those who seem to take it personally every time they are passed and ride like lunatics to defend or attempt a repass. That’s never going to end well.

I only got to see one crash first-hand. A quick red Lambretta was catching a large gaggle of battling scooters and was visibly getting giddy trying to join the fray. Just as he was about to pounce, the group spread all across the track in their own battle and he was left with nowhere to go but tumbling down the grass. Impatience bites hard in this game.

By this stage, under a cloudless Middlesbrough sky (there’s a phrase you don’t hear often) it was getting mighty hot and people were either adapting their strategy to the conditions or suffering. BSEC offered free bottles of water to riders in the pit. Headaches from sun-stroke affected both pilots and pit crew.

Perhaps the best demonstration of the effects of the heat was on the Numpties team whose leader brought their black PX in with chunks of stomach soup all over the floorboards, having projectile vomited inside his full-face helmet while riding down the straight. He was duly hosed-down while the chunk-splattered Vespa was handed straight to the next rider. I bet that smelled great in the van on the way home… For me, the most improved team were the Rushden Lambretta Club on their CP135 Vega. At their first event the scooter was very much in road spec with a comically-tall long range fuel tank and street tyres. Now, on race tyres their quickest rider was barrelling into fast corners as quickly as anyone with a qualifying pace 10 seconds a lap faster than the other Luna of Team Bemberton.

The fairytale ends

At the 6-hour mark things were looking good for SLUK Racing. Scott acclimatised quickly and Sam kept up the pace for two stints each. Next was my third stint.

By lap 253 we had a 13-lap, 17.5-minute advantage over second place runners SRP Essex on their lovely fibreglass-bodied Series 1. They in turn were hotly pursued by the Real Taffspeed Targa Twin (piston port version rather than the reedvalve type used by TD Customs to win at Whilton Mill) and Team Vespa on their yellow SS90.

Suddenly, after 6-hours racing, the engine lost power and refused to rev down the straight. I suspected a worn-out flywheel main bearing but it turned out to be something much more serious. One of the webs had twisted on the crankpin and the flywheel was now turning eccentrically and touching the stator plate.

Twisted cranks are a common problem in all forms of scooter tuning. Ours had been laser-welded to prevent twisting when I bought the Tameni race crank from LTH in Germany. But that was over a decade ago, so I really can’t grumble. I suspect any warranty may have expired 10 years ago.

The Vespa was still running, but not quickly enough to maintain our lead. Furthermore, there was every chance that continuing to race would wreak around £1,000 worth of damage to a perfectly-good SIP Vape ignition and a Quattrini M1-L kit. Instead, we elected to pull out and save the sick-running Vespa so it could do a final lap and take the flag for a finish. A tactical retreat I think they call that.

We were gutted but circumspect. We’d all had a good ride to that point.

Endurance racing is the cruellest mistress. Apart from Madam Sin and her predilection for arse and bollock slapping. Endurance racing is a little easier than that but there are similarities…

The meat grinder

Prior to our engine failure I’d been quite down on the 8-hour format. It seemed to me that the class winners would get sorted by hour six and the last two hours would just be more of the same. Well, that comment came to bite us on the arse didn’t it?

The truth of the matter is that a great deal changed in the last two hours. The Real Taffspeed team took over the lead from us in the Pro Race Class for one.

Meanwhile, the Club Class went down to the wire with only a few laps between the RB20 of Irish team Tuatha Dé Dannan, the Wearside Wanderers SC and previous winners IDK Racing. I clearly spoke too soon.

Road Class (slightly more experienced riders) was won by Team Numpties despite a couple of crashes and the pukey floorboards incident. They were trailed by a rag-tag band riding for SRP Racetec and CKM Racing.

Race Class was won by the ever-consistent SRP Essex – who also took the overall win – and the SS90 of Team Vespa.

One of the excellent things about this championship is that you are permitted to bring a spare scooter, so that if your main bike dies you are allowed to rejoin the racing with a massive lap penalty rather than needing to sulk off home early. Dukes of Essex managed to impressively overcome a 20-lap bike-swap penalty to claw back to 3rd position in the Race Class.