1998
Season
By Dave
Cawthorne
The 1998 season
started with a BANG!!!!!! Literally. John and Dave manage to qualify
the Devil's Shopping Trolley for the first round of the Aussie Titles
at Mallala in South Australia, only to send the contents of the
engine skywards during the morning warm up. After much swearing and
cursing, plus the throwing of helmets and gloves around the pit bay,
it was discovered that a small part, worth about 50 cents had failed
which then caused the engine to self-destruct. Other teams including
some of the top teams from around the country all pitched in to try
and get the boys going again, but unfortunately John and Dave were
again out of luck, (how surprising). oh well, it's just as well our
Motto is "Never ever give up".
The 1998 Master of
Mac Park meeting was the next challenge that our intrepid duo was to
have a go at. Apart from themselves every other team in the field had
at least won either a State Title, a National Championship, or some
other major race meeting. Team Army on the other hand was just trying
to get their temperamental relic to start, let alone run for an
entire race. John was heard to comment about his prehistoric machine,
"No wonder dinosaurs became extinct". The first two races went well
with the boys finishing in the top six, but we have since figured out
that fate was just lulling them into a false sense of
security.
On the Day of the
Big race the rain was absolutely bucketing down and the team being as
poor as it is was, was unable to afford wet weather tyres we resigned
ourselves to watching from the pits when Dave had the brainwave of
grooving our slick tyres to try to push the water away from the
contact patch on the road. A quick test during warm up and John gives
the verdict, "It's slippery as buggery, but what the hell....We'll
give it a go". The boys take to the track for the warm up lap and the
rest of us watch anxiously from the pits, John and Dave seemed to be
the calmest ones of the lot of us. We were all concerned as to how
the cut slicks would go, particularly as the rest of the field were
on full wet weather racing tyres and that it was raining so hard that
you could not hear the bikes over the sound of the rain.
Green light "GO"
John and Dave are just left on the line by everyone else as their
wheels were just spinning and giving them no traction, they slowly
got away in last place with twelve other bikes in front of them and
about 50 meters behind the last one. All of us expected John to come
into the pits and give up. But no-one expected what happened next. At
the end of the first lap John and Dave had hauled in the five bikes
in front of him and was riding like a man possessed we couldn't
believe that they were in seventh place, everyone crossed their
fingers and prayed that they would keep it all together. The next lap
and John and Dave pass Adrian Van Uiteret coming on to the main
straight sixth place. We were jumping up and down and hugging each
other, this was too good to be true. Pit crew of other race teams
couldn't believe it either, some of the less charitable ones
suggested that we were cheating, that there was no way that a bike as
old as ours was and one not running wet weather tyres could be up as
far as ours was. Second last lap and John and Dave are in fifth place
even the very wet crowd could see that something unusual was
happening. None of us in the pits could even bear to watch any
more.
The Last lap and
John tries a suicidal overtaking manoeuvre at the end of the main
straight trying to take fourth place but he hits a patch of water
which causes his outfit to aquaplane off the circuit at about 150kph,
as soon as it hits the dirt Dave is thrown clear, where he slides to
a stop with no major injuries. The sidecar wheel then digs into the
dirt and the bike flips and rolls about 3 or 4 times with John still
on the outfit as he is trapped by his leg the bike lands on his chest
and then finishes up on it's wheels. The race ambulance rushes to the
scene, and so do we, but we cannot get across the track to the
wreckage. One of the Flag Marshals tells us that John is dead, but
Dave is ok. After a bit of work John is untangled from the wreckage,
loaded into the ambulance along with Dave and taken to the hospital-
we are all appalled and depressed with what has happened. Just when
it seemed we were going to get some long overdue luck something like
this has to happen. The twisted wreckage is taken back to the pits
where we load it into the Truck. Toasts are about to be drunk to
John's memory, when Dave comes back from the Hospital and says "Stop!
The bugger's not dead yet". All the more reason to have a drink say
the rest of us. We all troop to the hospital where we find John
fighting with a formidable looking nursing sister who wants to cut
his race leathers off. John says that he doesn't care how much it
hurts he will take them off himself. John stares her down, and as she
leaves in a huff he says to us "For God's sake help me get these
things off before she comes back with the scissors". We then discover
that John has broken his right foot, and apart from a number of bad
bruises that's about the extent of his injuries.
He tells us that
this was the first time that he started to actually race the beast,
rather that just trying to master it's handling. He tells us that he
can't wait to race again. Everyone else tells him that he is either
stupid, crazy, or insane. Dave thinks that John is a combination of
all three.
We can all see why
the Team's Motto is "Never Ever Give up". And to be perfectly honest,
nor will we.
