November 22nd, 2011
A bucket-load of fun
The Auckland Motorcycle club bucket racing 2 hour is held annually at the Mt Wellington go-kart track. This year Hayden Fitzgerald and I (Avalon Biddle) were fortunate to be offered the use of Blue Wing Honda’s CBR125 for this event.
We headed out to the track on Saturday and again early Sunday morning to spin some practice laps (i.e. get used to dragging the foot rests on every corner!). Compared to Hayden’s usual Castrol Honda superbike and my CBR600RR, the 125cc four-stroke was a bit of a change of speed, but it was also a lot of fun and good training nonetheless. The engine of the little CBR held its own against the bigger capacity 150cc machines that everyone else was on and it never missed a beat all day.
Hayden did the Le Mans start and rode for the first hour, after which I took over and did the 2nd stint. There was lots of carnage and some pretty close calls for both of us trying to avoid bikes and bodies on track… Bucket racing may be slower than what either of us is used to, but the pile-ups can be just as spectacular! We were the only team to do a solid hour each and only have to stop once (most do 2 half hour runs per rider) so we stayed consistent and used the reliability of the CBR to get us to the finish line in 4th place.
A big thanks to Blue Wing Honda for the loan of the bike, and to Pete and Jason for prepping it for us. We now have a busy season coming up with the National Road Race Championships fast approaching, but expect to hear more bucket racing action from us next winter.
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