OK here’s the go, I just spent almost an hour (I use the seek and destroy method of typing, that is find the key and hit it) and I was right at the end and lost it all, so I'm doing a bit of an abbreviated style report.
Fellcrag is sick!! I love the place, the track is cool, super flowing, fast and fun all the way. The area is nice and quiet, but transport sucks, many people had new bikes and were less than happy with the stupidly rough transport road, however the new style trailers helped a lot keeping the bikes from obtaining too much damage.
Practice began Saturday with almost immediate drama, only 70 people had pre-entered and a further 120 had showed up to race, which meant 190 riders, with transport set up for less than half that. Whines and moans were heard, but little could be done. The organizers also started an interesting new event for the crew, a speed trap event with the help of Tag Heuer. Unfortunately this also spurred up some debate. For instance, I was rolling into the trap in practice with a clock of 60 km/h every time. After pinning it through the trap I clocked 53km/hr. Two tries later and what felt like my worst approach it showed up at 64km/h.???? What the????. Also on the other end, Wade Bootes was doing consistent mid 60's then all of a sudden did a 76 km/h run. Doesn’t matter though, he deserved to win, he has some big pistons. Sorry Tag guys, your speed trap has issues. It seemed as though it was set up properly on race day though as all speeds were consistent.
Onto Sunday, dramas began early when organizers decided due to the number of entrants they’d restrict us to one practice run. With allot of the locals just showing up to race on the day, this didn’t go down too well. Riders soon found that the track (being around 2 minutes long for most) could easily be walked up in less than half the time of the shuttles (despite the heat).
1st Mick Hannah, 2nd Jared Graves, 3rd Lindsay Klein
Racing started on time, and everyone was keen to get into it. Qualifying went well for me, had a really nice run and came in fastest with a 1:42 with Mick Hannah 2nd on a 1:46. I knew Mick took it a bit easy and I didn’t have much left (for a faster time). The other usuals were up there with Lindsay Klein in 3rd then Shane Wode, Jared Rando, Miles Mead, Ricky Boyer, Matt Tape and Tim Mann. Even Johnno Taylor thought he’d give qualifying a crack but decided half way down it was too hard so he rang his girlfriend instead. The one person missing though was currently 2nd overall in the series Adam Smithson, who ran himself into a tree. Adam didn’t look too good at the bottom, with a nose bleed that lasted more than 3 hours.
Finals time saw no sign of the storm that screwed the top 10 qualifiers last year so that was good. Before I knew it I was in the gate, can’t say too much about my run except it was just too scrappy at the top, got to the bottom and had gone a couple seconds slower than my qualifying, with a 1:44.5 and to see that Hannah had gone a 1:44.3, so I lost by 2 tenths, ahh crap. 3rd place was Lindsay Klein who was more than happy to have a nice run, he came in on a 1:46 followed by Rando in 4th on 1:47 and Miles Mead rounded out the top 5.
Once again it was all on between Tracy Hannah and Tai Lee Muxlow in the womens. This ended up with a bit of an anticlimax, as Tai found a tree and was taken to hospital with a very sore ankle. I haven’t yet heard how it is, but hope its ok. Tracy was left to take a comfortable win with a 2:05 giving a fairly successful Hannah family weekend.
Tracey Hannah 1st open women, Liam Panozzo 1st junior men
Liam Panozzo who was on the gas as always, took out the junior men in a 1:48.
I’d like to thank the organisers of the event and especially the drivers. Fellcrag is always a great days racing, it'd be a big disappointment to loose it as a race venue. I'd also personally like to thank Yeti cycles (my DH 9 is up and going now and the thing absolutely kicks ass), Rob Eva from SRAM and Matty Martin at Oakley.
Till next race, do bulk runs.
Jared Graves
Yeti Cycles
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