The magazine for classic Japanese motorcycles

Team Jam’s four hour

We should properly introduce them (or try at least), for you see (probably unlike you and me) Team Jam consists of Honda RC30 owners, being a small sub-group of the RC30 Owners’ Club. And so enthusiastic are these owner/riders for all things post classic, they run not only RC30s but a great collection of racing superbikes from the 1970s and 80s... even into the 90s. They might cosset and dote over these bikes but you only have to take one look at the state of the tyres, the brake dust smeared across the fairings, the bugs splattered across the screens, to see they’re as enthusiastic about track riding and parading as they are about ownership.

They’re from all walks. Neil Russell – who’s running the race operation (and would have raced but for an unavoidable clash of priorities) owns a yacht charter business.

Rob Beale, chief mechanic, is a central heating engineer turned classic bike restorer. Paul Kerry, one of the Four Hour riders, was a 250 proddie club racer on LCs back in the day. Claire Hancock, who’s looking after pit lane logistics, races a CB500/4 in CRMC events.

Casting around the pit we can count 12 of them (we think). Lloyd Thomas is notionally in charge, Stuart Seber’s going to be leading the refuel, Rob’s playing the protective parent (to the team’s race bike, which for the most part he built). Nearly everyone’s wearing leathers as they’re riding parades as well as doing team duties, so it’s only when the Four Hour practice starts that we can really identify Ian and Paul as the ‘pilots’.

They’re into the Four Hour because of Neil. Neil started racing his Moto Martin GS1000 in 2009, at an age far senior to that at which most racers have retired. He found he loved racing and that, combined with a love of this particular event (this would be his sixth Spa), meant his lifetime owned Moto Martin got rebuilt as an endurance racer for this year (mostly by Rob).

So this was Team Jam’s Four Hour...

Wednesday, June 29
14:00: Arrive, unpack.

Thursday, June 30
All day: Track day, woo-hoo!

Friday, July 1
18:00: pitlane opens for Q1 (rider one qualifying).

Paul Kerry rides the first session. He rides four laps with a best of 3:09.235 to qualify 42nd fastest.

Paul: “The first lap was incredible, I was towards the back with a hoard of bikes in front of me – it sounded like thunder! Bikes were weaving and darting everywhere as the faster riders wanted to get up to speed. I was laughing inside my helmet, this is it – it’s so much better than the trackday. Then I started to get a feel for the bike, passed a few people, picked the pace up steadily, passing some more. Then the bike cut out right at the back of the circuit. That was unfortunate, I was getting up to a nice pace, qualifying us nicely.”

18:25: Rob Beale’s working frantically on the bike.

Rob: “The bike was pumping oil into the catch tank. Not good. Then the battery gave up the ghost. It looks like it’s not getting charged. It could be generator, it could be wiring, it could just be the battery. We have five minutes before the next qualifier – we’ll swap the battery for now.

18:30: Pitlane opens for Q2 (rider two qualifying).

Ian Martin rides. He gets in eight laps, a best of 3:10.432 to qualify 46th fastest.
Ian: “The handling is a bit squirrelly and the brakes a bit juddery, but all in all you can run at a decent pace. There’s a lot of traffic, quite a few yellow flags, it’s surprisingly hard to get a clean lap, you’re constantly overtaking. I felt I was going fast enough to put us on the grid, the rest we can sort.”

19:00: Rob’s again frantically working on the bike.

Rob: “I’m putting a T-piece into the breather to redirect the oil that’s blowing out the cases back in again, via the filler cap. The lack of charging to the battery remains a mystery. We’re checking everything.”

Ian: “We’ve got a problem with pattering so we’re going to take some preload off (spacers in the top of the FZ600 forks). But possibly the issue is with the back. The problem is we don’t have too much time and I don’t want to change more than one thing at a time, so I’ll have a chat with Paul and decide what we’ll change, if anything.”

20:00: Pitlane opens for Q3 (rider one qualifying). Paul Kerry rides. He does
four laps, a best of 3:11.175 for 47th.

20:30: Pitlane opens for Q4 (rider two qualifying). Ian Martin rides. Or rather doesn’t. The team are attending to issues.

21:55: Night Q1 is set to go. Paul Kerry is waiting to go.

Paul: “I’m a little apprehensive. I do ride on the roads at home at night, but this will be something new. We’ll go positive and I can only do what I can do. It’s the same for everybody.”

23:00: Night Q2 has just finished. It’s been raining for much of night qualifying. Ian Martin has returned after a very abbreviated spell on track, riding with one light – and two batteries duck taped to the seat.

Ian: “That was interesting: in the rain! Really I was just after doing the required number of laps and we were running along on just the one headlight as we had charging issues, we were trying to save the battery so visibility wasn’t great, plus with the rain we took it really easy. You can’t see the apexes of any of the corners. Amazingly, because you know the circuit, the night alone isn’t too much of an issue, but the night and the wet does make it tricky.

“The bike still has a charging issue at the moment, but as long as we’ve done enough laps we’ve got the time and the spares to be able to sort it out. It could be the genny, the reg-rectifier, maybe a wiring issue. But the bike’s running fine, strong motor, it’s fast. We’ve got over the oil issue, it’s no longer pumping oil into the catch tank, it’s fine.”

Saturday, July 2

10:00: Rob is looking a little more relaxed than yesterday.

Rob: “We traced the charging issue to a rogue fuse. It’s not my wiring and that fuse shouldn’t even be there in the system, we didn’t know it was there, but at 15amp rated it had blown and so stopped the charge getting to the battery. We’ve replaced it with a 30amp and it’s all good.”

18:20: Warm up for rider one. Paul Kerry gets in two laps with a best of 3:16.790.

18:35: Warm up rider two. Ian Martin gets in three laps with a best of 3:17.486.

Paul Kerry: “Warm up was good, we went out and checked the bike, but there was a little oil leaking, which we attended to. It was leaking from the pressure switch going into the casings. We also adjusted the suspension and went the wrong way with that, the bike started wallowing so we returned that to how it was.”

19:30: Practice start

This is almost indistinguishable from the real start. Some 70 bikes roar away and settle into two laps before coming back and doing it all again. Paul is doing the starts. He’s made a good job of the practice one and returns settled and ready.

20:00: Start

Paul: “For the real start I ran across, pressed the button and nothing happened, I checked the kill switch to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake there. I hadn’t. The bike wasn’t firing. When eventually it did go I was virtually last off the grid. The old red mist came down and off I went. I caught the bunch up on the straight after Eau Rouge and passed maybe eight or nine riders over the next three corners, so I was feeling happier, on form.

“And then I came to one of the right-handers over the back, I went up the inside of two guys, not over-extending it, and had a massive slide. The back completely went and I thought I was down. The bike flicked upright, flicked me up in the air, breaking the screen either on the way up or the way down, I hit the gear lever and bent that, then hit the floor. I was still half on the seat, goodness knows how. I dragged myself back on and whipped the clutch in as I wasn’t sure what had happened and looked down at my left boot to see it covered in oil.”

Stuck in fourth gear, Paul gingerly cruised along the edge of the track to the pits. An enlarged crack in the casing by the pressure switch told the story...