Our 2015 Road Racing Season: Faugheen 50

The weekend of the 15^th of August we were going to the last race of our road racing season. There was another one in Killalane (north of Dublin) in September but we had a wedding in Asturias…

So on Friday we left at about 5.30pm to county Tipperary, at about 1h30 from home, the closest road race of the season. We stayed in a B&B at some 12km from the circuit. As I thought that Juan would go out of work late I had prepared sandwiches. But we arrived at 7.00pm, so after a tea/coffee in the B&B we went out to look for a place to eat our sandwiches.

We were at about 30km from Kilkenny, we thought of going there first, but we finally turned at some cross road before, stopped in a village to buy some drinks and went on. At the end of the village, three Asian people were hitchhiking. We stopped to ask where they were going to and they said “at 5 minutes” drive, so there we went. They were from South Korea, volunteering in the village (I think with elderly people but I’m not quite sure about it). After a while we left them at their accommodation. One of the girls told us that we could go to “Kells”, so when we saw the signs indicating Kells, we followed them and we arrived to a place with a carpark, some picnic tables and a view to a rampart and towers of what used to be a priory. We ate our sandwiches with the last sun rays and then we went for a walk around the ruins.

Then we went back to the B&B to rest.

In the morning we left after a good Irish Breakfast, we stopped in Carrick-on-Suir to buy some water and went to Faugheen village.

We parked in the first carpark we found and asked for the shortest way to walk to the paddock. The circuit is kind of a triangle and the paddock was right on the opposite side of where we parked, so about the same distance from one way or the other.

So we got to the paddock to see the bikes and the riders who had already arrived and we bought some essential stuffs for next year road races: a giant Suzuki umbrella and a hat each (Suzuki for me and Honda for Juan of course). I always wondered why we saw so many racers with hats (instead of baseball caps) on TV when they were interviewed. After a few races I understood, it’s just sooooo cold! So now we are prepared for next year 🙂 .

As we didn’t see any good place for photography on our way to the paddock, we went on around the circuit (2.2miles = 3.5km); and we stopped at the next corner “Creamery corner” and settled there. It was still early so that we had some rest in the sun.

At noon they closed the roads and started with the practice and qualifying sessions. They started with some laps for the “Newcomers”, the ones who never raced on that track so they can learn the track.

“Creamery corner” must be a difficult corner because many went straight (in all sessions). All practice sessions started with one or 2 laps leaded by a “Marshall” and with another Marshal and the doctor at the end of the group. Before every race the next day there were also 2 warm-up laps in the same conditions.

We spent all the practice sessions taking pictures…

Robert McCrum

Paul Jordan

Michal Dokoupil

William Dunlop

Derek Mc Gee

Paul O Rourke gives a lift to Derek McGee after his Kawa ER650 stopped after the first warmup lap during Supertwin practice

Seamus Elliott

Brian Coomey

Dario Cecconi

John O Donovan

Sean Leonard

Brian McCormack

John Walsh

Once the practice sessions finished they ran 2 races: Open 201-1010cc (non championship) and Support 401-750cc (non championship). The last one was stopped after an accident but the rider was back on track for racing the next day.

After a while without too much information they announced the classification, informed about the rider and opened the roads. We went back to the carpark and went to Carrick-on-Suir to have dinner and back to the B&B for resting.

The next morning we went back to Carrick-on-Suir to buy some things to prepare sandwiches as we had seen no fish&chips trucks around the circuits except in the paddock. The races had been about to be cancelled as 15 days before they had not enough racers registered to run the event. Fortunately after a call through social media and between riders they got more entries and some riders registered in more categories (for example William Dunlop brought his 125 with which he doesn’t usually race anymore. Though at last he couldn’t race with it for a mechanical problem).

We parked in the same carpark after going to the paddock to buy some tee-shirts for supporting the club.

And we went to the field on the left side of “Gubb Cross” corner, where they had settled 2 open trucks trailers to see the circuit over the hedges.

We got in one of the trailers where there was a good view to the circuit on the left and to the corner on the right, where we would witness many anthology braking, crazy overtaking and also some “too late” braking (with no dangerous consequences. Only one rider had the doctor stopping and he went back to the paddock as the doctor’s pillion lol).

Before the road closing we made friend with a man who arrived at the same time and with whom we chatted of many things while waiting. We used for the first time our umbrella with a short shower though we were quite well sheltered in the trailer. Then a couple arrived, who were friends of the man, and also very nice people and we spent a good day chatting and also laughing a lot because we never knew which race was on as the order was changed compared to the program and we were mistaken with the 2 races that had been ran the previous day, so it was a little confusing… Anyway, it was still very pleasant and exciting to spend the whole day watching the 11 races, with no incident and no rain.

There were two “breaks” with laps done by a rally car from the 70s spinning in each corner of the circuit.

The 600 race, the “Support 201-400cc Championship” and the final race were just heart-stopping, with crazy braking and overtaking at that corner (if you see the corner you won’t believe you can actually overtake there…).

Derek Sheils won the “Grand Final” (and one of the Superbike race) in spite of having missed the qualifying session on Saturday as he was racing at the Masters Series in Bishopcourt (Northern Ireland).

John Walsh

Once again we had a very nice day. On Sunday we took very few pics but we enjoyed the races at most.

After saying goodbye to our 3 new friends until next year, we went back home.

We saw fabulous racing, very well organised, there was no rain and no incident. But I used my hat for the first time and I didn’t take it out in all the day. One of our neighbours told me that he had been living in Ireland for 65 years  and he was still not used to the weather… So I still have some margin to get used to it LOL.

We end up the 2015 Road Racing season on a very good note, long will be the wait until April 2016…

V’s