TEAM EMCO FAIL TO BREAK THEIR JINX AT OULTON PARK

Team Emco rider Neil Faulkner, had a nightmare weekend at the tough Oulton Park circuit last weekend. At a circuit that has always brought problems to the team, they had great hopes after the success at Silverstone. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be and the dramas started from the second practice session.

After re-acquainting himself with the circuit, Faulkner started to knock seconds off his best lap round the undulating technical track. However after only three laps in the second session, the number one bikes engine dropped a valve. As the second bike hadn’t turned a wheel, the team decided to spend the time swapping the engine into the number one bike rather than try and get the second bike set up for the rapidly approaching qualifying session. This brought about its own problems with the number two engine having a different gearbox (requiring different final drive gearing) and different cams (requiring it to be re-mapped at the circuit by Ian from Virgin Yamaha, Thanks Ian!) On track for the final practice session, the team set about frantically trying to get the gearing right, which is critical at Oulton. The bike was still not pulling, due to the mapping having to be guessed, and this made the job even harder. When Faulkner returned to the pits at the end of the session, it wasn’t good news, he was having to try too hard just to go anywhere near as fast as on the number one bike in the first session.
The teams only hope was for rain in qualifying. As if to answer the teams prayers, it did indeed rain just before qualifying, although the session was started on a drying track. The team took the decision, to go for it in the early laps and use the qualifiers at the beginning and hope it rained again. It looked like the gamble would pay off, when Faulkner was up to 15th overall and fastest privateer and pulled into the pits with it starting to spit with rain. Unfortunately, it didn’t! Instead it dried out and everyone went faster, leaving Faulkner without a time fast enough to qualify.
This turned out to be a blessing in disguise though as the data-logging showed the engine ready to go bang! With both engines out and back to Virgin Yamaha, the team packed up and consoled them selves with the fact that they still had another round at Oulton to break the Jinx!