White Dalton Blog

The 2010 season starts this Saturday at Mallory Park. Part of the club
racing idiom is not knowing who you will be racing until you sign in on
raceday morning. The pecking order won’t shake out until after qualifying,
at the earliest. One (big) step up, in the British paddock, all the riders
and teams are known to each other to some extent and, at the highest level,
all the lap times from the official tests are public. There are few unknowns
in MotoGP.
In stark contrast, I’ll roll into Mallory’s paddock – crammed with vans and
motorhomes like commuters under the only bus shelter in a downpour – with
few ideas of who I’ll be racing against and what they’ll be riding. The
practice day on Friday will be spent giving my GSX-R a shakedown, refining
the set-up and then digging for speed. The time between sessions is for
dozens of micro-reunions with friends from this other life. All the while,
everyone is looking around, trying to spot new bikes in their class and work
out how quick they are.
One known fact is that last year’s Streetfighter A champion, Andy Denyer,
has moved to the B class. I guess I’ll need a new nemesis. That means I’ll
be even more of a marked man as returning and new SF-A racers alike measure
themselves against me. My goal is to make that the longest yardstick.
Nerves and excitement have battled in my stomach all week, though each was
defeated by the sheer stress of trying to get everything ready. Despite
working flat-out since mid-December, there are still some details to be
sorted tomorrow (Thurs) before I leave. I’ll post about the heroes and
villians involved next week. It’s some consolation that even top teams find
themselves in this situation and that it wasn’t for the want of effort. A
rough estimate puts the tally at around 140 hours spent on the bike and
another 20 on my van. At least my wife has now learned to check in the
garage before starting a ‘Have you seen this man’ Facebook group. That was
embarrassing.
Look out for daily updates and wish me luck.
Wilko

http://twitter.com/JWilkinsRacing
This season I’ll be using Twitter to post mini-blogs as well as the normal
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It’s a Suzuki GSX-R750 K6 and it’s taken all winter to build into this high-spec streetfighter.
I really wanted to keep it looking like a GSX-R, so the bodywork is simply cut down to the maximum size permitted by the regs.
Spec highlights include a Yoshimura exhaust system, WP suspension and Renthal FatBars.
This particular model was a leap on from the K5 and features a close-ratio gearbox, slipper clutch, improved brakes and excellent chassis balance. I used to have one on the road and I’ve ridden them on track a lot too. I always loved them before, so I’m really looking forward to racing this bike.
More pics will follow once all the graphics arrive and I’ll make a gallery in the photos section of my site which will later include detail shots and pics of the various stages of development.

My new bike is almost complete and I’ll reveal it this weekend. The bodywork has been painted by S&B Automotive Academy and it looks fantastic. This weekend will be my first chance to get pics of it in daylight so I’ll post a few then. After that I’ll explain the choice of bike and parts, plus give some insight into the build with pics from various stages, minus the cursing and skinned knuckles.
Right now, I’ve just prepared the bike to go on the dyno at JHS Racing tomorrow, and finished off a couple of other bits. Then I got carried away and did some work on my van too, which is why it’s now 1.30am. It’s a school night and everything.
My race entries went off in the post today and Thundersport published a list of nearly 50 names who will be competing in the three Streetfighter classes. However, we’ll have to wait for Mallory Park 12-13 March to see who is in which class and what they’re riding.

Here’s the last detail pic before I reveal the finished bike. This is the business end – my Robby Moto Quick-Action Throttle and PT radial 19mm brake master cylinder.