 Sorry it's been a while since my last column, but I've been flat out with the Bikebiz guys getting my bikes ready for the racing season.
The Bikebiz team is a really great team to be in. Mark, (the boss - Head Honcho, Grand Pooh Bah etc), is one of the three Condon brothers that own and run Bikebiz Yamaha in Parramatta, near Sydney. Bikebiz was Australia's Number 1 Yamaha Dealer last year, so they know what they are doing. Mark is a racing enthusiast, and is always really positive and motivational. The Crew Chief and Mechanic on the team is Rod. Everyone calls him "Bottles". Still don't know why yet. Bottles puts our bikes together for us and never seems to stop working. He even ropes his father-in-law, Kevin, into the act. Kevin's an ideas man. We call him "the ideas man". He's always thinking of something to make or build that will help us out on the track. The next member of the team is Frank Pons. He's our suspension guru, and I reckon we're pretty lucky having him working for us this year. Frank's worked with a lot of big names in the past, like 500GP guys and World motocross guys. He's Spanish and knows everyone in the game. I reckon I don't go as fast unless Frank is there. He always seems to get more out of my bike for me. My racing Team-mate this year is Tony Rees. Multiple New Zealand champion, and long time member of the Bikebiz team. Tony is very relaxed and has a great sense of humour. Tony and I talk all the time, and he doesn't hide any information from me. I'm sure I'll learn a lot this year from Tony. I'm not sure I want to take on board all his tips about sheep, but he reckons you can't knock it until you've tried it. John Inkson is a Microsoft systems engineer, and a long time friend of my Dad's. He first helped us at Bathurst last year, and got the racing bug. Now he comes everywhere with us, and he's a great to have around. He's part of the Bikebiz team. Of course my Dad and younger brother Al, are also there at all the meetings, and I couldn't do it without them. All up it's a really good team and I feel pretty comfortable there. It's a really close knit team and when things need doing everybody just bogs in and does it. So far this year we have raced in two rounds of the Formula Xtreme competition, and I'm running 5th in the points. As with all new teams there have been a few teething problems but we've fixed most of them as they happen, and we are starting to perform better now. I reckon that race wins for Tony and I are not too far away. Tony won both races in pretty crappy conditions at Phillip Island in the World Supers support races. I wasn't real happy with where I finished up, but that's racing I guess. We are in W.A now getting ready for the first round of the Australian Superbike Championships. It's been a huge job just getting ready to go. The whole lot of us were up until 3 am Sunday night after the Formula Xtreme race packing everything into crates and getting the bikes ready to go. Tony had the biggest crash he's had in ages backing the bike down the ramp out of the truck! Anyway hopefully we'll go alright in W.A. and come back with a couple of trophies. We'll see what happens. Before I finish off, I just wanted to send a Get Well to Dean Evans who busted his leg up pretty bad. I hope you get better soon mate! Well that's about it for now, I'll write another column after W.A. |