Another note from Paul Whibley. Whibs is campaigning the 2004 season with HONDA RACING FAST EDDY:
If you would like to send Whibs your support he is @: paulwhibley@hotmail.com
Hi guys,
I\'ve had a busy couple of weeks. Last weekend we went down to the first
Spanish championship race near Barcelona. I was expecting some better weather
in Spain but I was sadly disappointed, it was cold with some rain. Eddy and I
were going to use this race as a warm up to the WEC that starts in Spain on
the 13, 14 March.
The race started well for Eddy, he won the first test overall and had good
tests the rest of the day, finishing 3rd in class and 4th overall.
My day was a bit of a roller coaster. I had an average start, I pushed to hard
and made many mistakes but my time was ok, as the day progressed I became more
comfortable and put in some good times. My best test I was 2nd overall behind
Juha Salminen (1 sec off the pace). But the last test was on the beach in deep
sand. We were riding at the back behind a lot of club riders and they had put
holes in all the berms. I pushed too hard and dropped it in one corner, losing a
lot of time. I think I finished the race 10th in class.
Scotty turned up on Tuesday. Katherine and I had a mad dash to the airport at
5 in the morning to collect him. In true Scotty style he was straight to work
cleaning the bike. You would never have thought he had just flown 24 hrs.
The weekend just gone we had the 1st British championship race. I have to say
it has been the best race I\'ve done out of NZ so far. It was in sand and it
got rough!(cool) They have one test raced 3 times on Saturday and 4 times on
Sunday. In the trees, quite tight (everybody said it was fast). All the trail was
tight trees and I must admit I got into it, it was fun!
On the first test near the start I hit a tree realy hard, it blew my right
hand of the bars but I didn\'t crash. Just gave a few spectators a fright. Anyway
my time was average, but in the next two tests I climbed up into 3rd with some
good times.
On Sunday I was on the pace right from the start, but at the end of a
really tight section, I went into the check early. It was a bit of a
ballsup (big ballsup). We had someone standing by the clock signaling that I
had 1 minute to spare. So I rode up to him and stopped and waited for my time to
check in. But what I didn\'t see was that he was inside the check! and that the
yellow flags were 15m back from the clock on a small corner. So I incurred a
time penalty. My times for the rest of the day were very good, easily good
enough for third again, if I didn\'t have the penalty.
On Tuesday morning I fly down to Spain for the first WEC.
C U V later,
Paul.
(Yes, I Paul Whibley wrote all this, not Katherine). Maybe you can tell by all
the spelling mistakes). (Yes - Bill W.)
And full results, TT times, etc Are Here: