So it’s been a week since we marked about a half mile track...
A few of a DTRA crew were over, helping us get Greenfield Dirt Track ready for the final rounds of their UK and Euro Championships the following weekend. Anthony Brown, Scott Faulkner, Fergus Bluff, Max Inman, Gary Birtwistle and the usual Greenfield boys Matthew, Toby etc were all helping us get the timing loop working again, picking some stones from the track, painting the fence, strimming and cutting grass etc...
We were in the middle of sweeping the whole track, with regular sweeping brushes and the morale of the team was starting to deplete. To remotivate the team, Jon Sealy (Braking Point Images) went back to our main cabin and got us all a Red Bull (Red Bull sponsor us with drinks for our training schools). While we had a minute, I told everyone that if we push on for another half-an-hour we’ll go up and look at the half mile track, adding 'You can all ride it if you want, but it’ll not be great!'
It hasn’t rained at all since we marked it out, and I’m not keen to go and put 100,000 litres of water on it so we could have a play for an hour or so.
We finished off our morning jobs on the track and then headed up to the half-mile to eat lunch and see if anyone dared ride it.
Scott got Strava out on his phone and did a lap to confirm if it was actually a genuine half mile. It was. While Scott was doing this, we discovered that Gary Birtwistle actually responded well to peer pressure.
'It's deep isn't it, Gary? Bet you wouldn’t ride that with flat track tyres...' was about all it took for him to fire the Evolve Racing Honda CRF450 into life and set off for his maiden voyage/
After sheepishly completing about 4 laps, he pulled back in. 'It isn’t great” he said... 'Nah you were getting faster mate, keep at it.. Braking Point Images is here look, you at least want a photo don’t you?' I asked him. Again Gary confirmed his weakness to peer pressure ad set off. This time with the bit between his teeth, running flat out in top gear on the straights! It was a sight to behold as he was tucked in down the back straight with one hand on the fork leg, desperately trying to get that ‘good photo’ for Instagram.
Toby Hales then rolled up on this MX set up - CRF250 and started doing laps too, the motocross tyres were better in the deep turns, but the lack of power on the straights gave him a very similar lap time to Gary.
So there you go, the first laps on the Greenfield Half-Mile!
We still plan to rip it up again in a month or two, but we have learnt something and with a bit of rain and some more tyre packing, we could possibly have a lot of fun on this track.
Oliver Brindley is back in a month or so, so we’re aiming to have a couple of fun days with him on it before it’s put back to farm land!