Motor Races

Friday, August 24, 2012

18-19 Aug., 2012 I raced at Mosport, Ontario, Canada in the V.R.R.A's flagship event. I entered my '46 Moto Guzzi Dondolino in the Pre-50 class, but unfortunately I was the only entry. Usually there are three or so Rudges entered led by Ingo Reters and his son, and I was looking to mix it up with them. Because the Pre-50 class ran concurrently with the Period 1 350, I entered my H-D Sprint ERTT in the bump up class, Period 2 Lightweight. I also entered the P1/P2 Master's race for riders over 50 years old.

My pit; Dondo on the bench, ERTT in the backround

The VRRA just runs a single round of practice Sat. & Sun. mornings, having had practice (and a 2 hr. endurance race) on Fri. Both my bikes went well in practice and didn't need any adjustments before their five lap heat races Sat. to determine starting positions for Sunday's eight lap finals. The Dondolino was up first in a race combining P1 Open, pre-65 500, P1 350 with Pre-50. Even though I was the only Pre 50 entrant, there were plenty of people to dice with as there were 27 entries overall and, starting from last on the grid, I finished 10th overall. A few of the CB350 Honda guys were surprised by the speed of the old can.

The '46 Dondolino in turn #10; Paul Pace photo

The P2 Lwt. class had, by contrast, 23 entries and there were 37 overall in the heat which included P1 500, pre-65 350 and P1 200. Shortly after the heat started, my bike started intermittently cutting out, then running fine. This got worse and on the 3rd lap the bike finally stopped at turn #5, Moss's Corner. I had to wait until the completion of the next race to get picked up and then had one race to figure out what was wrong before the Masters race. The tank was low on fuel and I put more in, though I though it should have run on that. I cleaned and checked the points, but when I fired it up, it was still cutting out. I noticed the ground plug for the battery was loose and tightened that up, but still it was cutting out. Out of time and in desperation, we disconnected the kill button and that seemed to cure it. We had 14 starters in the Masters, 10 of which were P2. This race has no heat, only the 8 lap final. Peter Hurst quickly cleared off on his Rickman Triumph Trident, and I scrapped with Stan Nicholson on his TD-2 Yamaha and Doug Forbes on his 750 BMW. Eventually, I was able to shake Stan and, after harassing Doug, he eventually pulled away. After, I took the kill button apart and found nothing wrong with it, so I don't know if that was the problem in the P2 Lwt. heat, or if the alien were just messing with me. Big thanks to Ivan Messina for helping me with the frantic thrash to get the bike running again.

The ERTT in turn #10, Paul Pace photo

In Sun. morning practice, the Dondolino had some high rpm misfire and I checked and cleaned the points in that and put a new sparkplug in. The ERTT seemed fine. It's final ran first. Stan Nicholson had won the heat and I hadn't finished, so he started on the front row and me on the back. But, I had beat him in the Masters so the question was: could I catch him? I did catch Stan in a lap or two, but he stepped it up from Sat. and pulled away, eventually catching and passing early leader Tim Voyer on his 350 Honda. My bike seemed to run fine, but my fastest lap was a second slower than Sat.

Paul Pace photo

The pre-50 Final was the 2nd last race of the weekend and that high rpm misfire was still there, but despite that, my fasted lap was 1/2 sec faster than Sat. Go figure. There were a couple of more entrants Sun. than Sat. and I finish 13th out of 38 overall.

Paul Pace photo

It was a great weekend with fine weather (a little cool at night), good entries (other than pre 50), lots of spectators, and an impressive concourse. Mosport is a challenging, high speed track, and it's new owners are putting money into it. And the event was very well run by the VRRA without any red flags on Sat. or Sun., to my knowledge.
Some rare bike in the concours: