N
noneglibob
Guest
Laverda Corse had a mixed bag of results at the Rijeka track in Croatia last weekend. First the good news; Francesco Greggio and Pietro Manzalini riding Pietro's F500 came 7th overall in the 325KM race. This was an excellent result because they were the smallest capacity bike remaining in the race , all the other bikes were 750cc and above. Now the bad bit;
I'd brought my new race bike along for its debut endurance meeting and , despite running like a train in qualifying and showing great promise after a storming start by Piero, the bike was sidelined by an ignition problem just 7 laps into the race. Obviously I was bitterly disappointed but due to a simultaneous ignition failure and rear wheel puncture we were going out of the race one way or another.
The ignition fault was down a poorly manufactured trigger/rotor unit, something I'd spotted when first installing the Sachse ignition. The plan was to have a new one made to a better design but just didn't have the time to attend to it before the race. It had completed 10 hours of testing and so I felt it would be OK . It wasn't..... :sad: If a bike's got a week point an endurance race will find it out. Mind you, if the ignition hadn't ended our race the puncture certainly would have, possibly with more drastic consequences.
Rijeka is a fantastic venue with a full GP length track, it has no modern concessions to speed restrictions such as the chicanes which plague so many circuits nowadays and is a good old fashioned riders circuit requiring balls and brains in equal measures. The scenery is incredible, the people are great and despite the setback we had a wonderful weekend . The new racer is very fast indeed and qualifying in the rain provided some daunting moments. Rijeka has two very fast straights where the bike was pulling 8000 rpm on long gearing, I haven't done the maths yet but I'm guessing the speed was close to 130mph. Next season should see us hit the ground running with the new machine and we hope to bring in some good results. Meanwhile we have one race left at Francaciorta in October.
Here's a few pics from the weekend;
1] Where it all began; Piero is standing outside the garage in the grounds of his family's old villa where the very first Laverda was built by his father. The property is being developed and it may well be that this historic landmark disappears in the next few years. It'll be a great shame if it does
2] The bike basking in the Italian afternoon sunshine sporting its nice new paddock stands
3] Lined up outside the pit alongside a Honda 750 raced by friends of Giovanni Laverda. Note the scenery in the background
4] Starting line up for the Le Mans style start. Piero did a sneaky 2nd gear start and gained 7 places by the end of the first straight. The torque of the Atlas engine has many advantages!
5] We drove home over the Alps and found that tackling the Stelvio pass in a fully laden van was equally as scary as Rijeka circuit, in fact more so! Big respect to those of you who have ridden the pass on past pilgrimages to Breganze. It's a road which will punish the over-enthusiastic rider or driver quite severely. This view is taken from the summit of the pass and you can see the pass snaking down the valley on the left. After this we drove down to St. Moritz and home through France
PS I should add that I'm very pleased with the Sachse ignition, the problem with the rotor may well be specific to the Atlas crank, or even specific to my Atlas crank. On my engine [it might differ on others] the rotor wasn't a snug fit on the crank and needed a deeper recess to allow the rotor to butt up to a shoulder on the crank. Without this support the rotor was able to vibrate loose [despite copious amounts of Loctite and a spring washer to secure it] and eventually it chaffed away the locating spigot and the ignition timing was lost
I'd brought my new race bike along for its debut endurance meeting and , despite running like a train in qualifying and showing great promise after a storming start by Piero, the bike was sidelined by an ignition problem just 7 laps into the race. Obviously I was bitterly disappointed but due to a simultaneous ignition failure and rear wheel puncture we were going out of the race one way or another.
The ignition fault was down a poorly manufactured trigger/rotor unit, something I'd spotted when first installing the Sachse ignition. The plan was to have a new one made to a better design but just didn't have the time to attend to it before the race. It had completed 10 hours of testing and so I felt it would be OK . It wasn't..... :sad: If a bike's got a week point an endurance race will find it out. Mind you, if the ignition hadn't ended our race the puncture certainly would have, possibly with more drastic consequences.
Rijeka is a fantastic venue with a full GP length track, it has no modern concessions to speed restrictions such as the chicanes which plague so many circuits nowadays and is a good old fashioned riders circuit requiring balls and brains in equal measures. The scenery is incredible, the people are great and despite the setback we had a wonderful weekend . The new racer is very fast indeed and qualifying in the rain provided some daunting moments. Rijeka has two very fast straights where the bike was pulling 8000 rpm on long gearing, I haven't done the maths yet but I'm guessing the speed was close to 130mph. Next season should see us hit the ground running with the new machine and we hope to bring in some good results. Meanwhile we have one race left at Francaciorta in October.
Here's a few pics from the weekend;
1] Where it all began; Piero is standing outside the garage in the grounds of his family's old villa where the very first Laverda was built by his father. The property is being developed and it may well be that this historic landmark disappears in the next few years. It'll be a great shame if it does
2] The bike basking in the Italian afternoon sunshine sporting its nice new paddock stands
3] Lined up outside the pit alongside a Honda 750 raced by friends of Giovanni Laverda. Note the scenery in the background
4] Starting line up for the Le Mans style start. Piero did a sneaky 2nd gear start and gained 7 places by the end of the first straight. The torque of the Atlas engine has many advantages!
5] We drove home over the Alps and found that tackling the Stelvio pass in a fully laden van was equally as scary as Rijeka circuit, in fact more so! Big respect to those of you who have ridden the pass on past pilgrimages to Breganze. It's a road which will punish the over-enthusiastic rider or driver quite severely. This view is taken from the summit of the pass and you can see the pass snaking down the valley on the left. After this we drove down to St. Moritz and home through France
PS I should add that I'm very pleased with the Sachse ignition, the problem with the rotor may well be specific to the Atlas crank, or even specific to my Atlas crank. On my engine [it might differ on others] the rotor wasn't a snug fit on the crank and needed a deeper recess to allow the rotor to butt up to a shoulder on the crank. Without this support the rotor was able to vibrate loose [despite copious amounts of Loctite and a spring washer to secure it] and eventually it chaffed away the locating spigot and the ignition timing was lost
