Back to Cadwell Park for the 4th Sidecar Festival supported by RKB Motorsport. Always an excellent meeting and a great turn out. From classics to F1 world series outfits, they’re all here. Taxi rides were available for folks to try their hand in the chair and get a feeling of what its like being a few inches off the floor doing 100 mph!

We arrived on thursday evening for testing and it was a beautiful drive up with a cracking sunset. Got the awning up, had a mooch round and settled down for the night. Ben and the gang was arriving on Friday evening so we needed a passenger for testing, just to run the engine in, so Taylor Oldroyd, team and personal friend, said he would jump on. Only a novice but more than capable of helping out for the day and a great opportunity for him to see what an F2 is like as he usually passengers a classic.

The engine was one rebuilt from the TT and was one of our top ones, we picked it up on the way back from the Southern 100 and was looking forward to a great weekend with it in the outfit as it sounded awesome! Phil turned up to help us with the weekends events, which was great to have him back again, a full camp nearly!

We’d just booked the afternoon test sessions which was enough to bed the engine in and prep it for race day when Ben would be on board. First session was very steady and managed a few decent laps with Taylor clinging on!! The boy did good but got himself some arm pump which was going to happen as he was quite nervous before he went out and the acid builds up really quickly! After a good talking to we got him back for the next session, bike running really well and Wayne’s seems quite happy with it. The last session and they get back in a Wayne notices an oil leak with spray on his boot. This cant be happening!! What on earth is going on……. After checking to find the source, we find a new oil fitting was loose and it had leaked into the catch tray, which although was the right thing, it didn’t take away that the engine had run with very little oil in it. After tightening it up and re checking everything, Wayne topped the oil back up and started her up again. It all seemed to run ok but the oil pressure was low and that meant that some damage has probably occurred already…. not good news at all. We let Ben know just to prepare him for the worst before he got here, we know he’d of been gutted as we were but there’s not much we can do. All our other engines were at Mikes waiting to be rebuilt so we were stuck. Anyway, Saturday, practice time, with Ben, Nikki, Miley John, Helen and Dave Hirst all in camp now we were ready to see what was possible. Fuelled up and all running ok, the headed out on the first lap, only to come straight back in with a dubious sounding rattle in our number 1 motor. Absolutely gutted! No other words……. I just wanted to walk off and be away from the camp for a bit and Wayne was totally fed up with the whole thing. We had a really good chance with an awesome engine and this happened. So So sorry for Ben and his family, they have made such a long journey over every meeting only to have no track time because of the breakdowns, its very hard for the moral of the team. I know its racing…… but its also really hard to take on when you put so much into it. We can only get this refreshed, again, and get one of the other engines back as soon as Mike can get it done. To say we are low on funds now is an understatement, we might be able to finish the season at a push but it really is going to be scraping the barrel with engines and tyres.

Any help would be much appreciated, please…… we cannot get the Boris motor in until it has had the once over from Mike and a couple of alterations made, this of course, will cost us too, funds which have depleted to nearly zero now. It’s been the toughest year for Real Racing, we’ve never had all these problems before and it’s been a real test of our dedication, but we. Will crack on the best we can and look forward, not backwards!

Taxi rides were going out and Louisa had got her heart set on another try in the chair…… Mike Jackson said he would take her round for a couple of laps and boy she did an amazing job!! She was a real pro out there, working all the corners, out for the lefts and over for the rights! She was awesome, and totally enjoyed it! What have we started?!

Thank you Mike for looking after Louisa!

Sunday was race day too and we were so pleased when Ben said that he’d been asked to hop on with Dean Harrison for the FSRA wild card race. Dean was riding Conrads Ireson that he’d recently brought and it was a great opportunity for Ben to get some track time in too.

There was a lovely memorial lap too for Roger and Bradley Stockton and our awesome Photographer Jenny Triker Wells, who recently lost her battle with cancer. It was a stunning turn out of outfits and a fitting tribute to them all.

Matty and Lisa came on Sunday for Lisa’s birthday taxi ride, so exciting! She went out for a spontaneous couple of laps in the memorial parade with Mike Russell and the for her taxi ride on the side of Dean Harrison….. you lucky lady, hope you had the best time! I believe that both Lisa and Louisa will be taking their passenger licence course together now!

Well after a disappointing weekend for us racing, or lack of it, we were heading off with tails between our legs hoping for a better time at our next meeting at Croft in 2 weeks time. Mike is bringing one of the engines to us on his way back from Thruxton BSB and although it’s not our super TT engine, it’ll hopefully see us through the weekend and get us some much needed points and track time. I have everything crossed and Wayne is quietly optimistic, trust me, your confidence in your machine does tend to waiver a bit after so many breakdowns, so I really do hope this gets some of it back for the whole team but Wayne especially.

Thank you so much for everyone’s patience and support through the weekend, to Mike Dommett for a well run meeting as usual, to the orange army and medics, Tony and Emily Brennan, awesome to see our Island friends. Cracking company, Nikki and Miley, perfect weather….. Weldone to all the teams that took part in another successful sidecar bash and looking forward to the next one!