Metrakit World Festival Junior GP report

14 year old Victorian junior road racer Adrian Di Giandomenico recently travelled to Spain with other Australian Metrakit juniors, where they represented Australia, competing against 15 other countries at the Annual Metrakit World Festival.

Victorian junior road racer Adrian Di Giandomenico recently travelled to Spain with other Australian Metrakit juniors Dylan Mavin, Matt Davies and Nick Diles, where they represented Australia, competing against 15 other countries at the Annual Metrakit World Festival, held on the 15th -16th December at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit Valencia. Troy Corser was also in attendance to assist.

14 year old Adrian tells his story:

 
We arrived at Melbourne airport at 6:30pm. We check in and got our boarding passes. We went though customs, it was so strange! Our flight was called up so we boarded our plane. I was so excited! We left the Melbourne airport, we were flying. During the flight we had lots off different types of foods. I ended up playing computer games against my mates for hours.

We had been in the air for 30 hours finally we were in Spain Valencia. By the time I got to the hotel in Valencia it was 12:30pm. We got into the hotel room I jumped on to the bed I was out like a light. Next day went outside and had a look around the hotel looked like it came from the 18th century. On Friday 14th December we all went to the track to set up our Bikes and put all of our stickers on. By the time we were finished it was around 10:00pm and it was the night before the race. I was so excited I didn’t think I could sleep. The days finally came. It was Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th of December. I arrived at the track at 7:30am. It was freezing and it was minus 3 when we got out of the car.

It was so hard to communicate to the mechanics because of the language barrier. To get my suspension changed was so hard because the mechanics had no idea what we where talking about, so we had to draw it on paper so they could understand. If I had more days at the track, it would have been perfect to get the bike set up to 100% and learn the track a little better. At 9:00am I got into my leathers on and it was time to get onto the track I was so nervous riding my bike down pit lane. It was practice and it went for 30 minutes.

When I got out of pit lane I took 2 laps to see the track and heat up the tyres to the right temperature. Then I was going for it! I managed to tag one of the locals for a few laps. My times were getting faster and faster all the time, then I pulled into the pits because the bike was running too cold. I went back out; I had 15 minutes left of practice. Half way through the practice my fingers started to go numb, but I carried on for another 5 minutes. It was so hard to brake because my fingers weren’t moving all that much so I had to come in.

I got of the bike and had a look at the clock. It said we had only 2 minutes and 50 seconds left, so I put my hands on the engine of the bike to try and warm them up. I cold not even feel the heat after a few minutes, and then my fingers felt fine. 30 minutes later we headed of to a riders briefing. They spoke in Spanish and I couldn’t understand one word! Then they said it in English after. After the riders briefing I had to get ready for the first qualifying session.

Pit lane was open so we took the tyre warmers off the bike. I hoped on it and rode down pit lane. I got onto the track and put in lots of good laps. At the end of the qualifying I was 15th fastest in my group. My time was a 2:02.119. The Ricardo Tormo race circuit is 4.2klm. One hour later I was back out on the track for my 2nd qualifying session; my fastest time was a 1:58.456.

There were 2 groups: Group A and Group B. I qualified 41st in group A (The fastest kids). When I came back in my bike was impounded for 30 minutes, so I decided to walk back down to the garage and start to get out of my leathers. After I got out of my gear we all went to a raffle draw. They called out my number and I won a pair of goggles. 30 minutes later they had finished the raffle so we all decided to leave the track for the day and head back to the motel for something to eat. Sunday morning came and we had breakfast, then headed back to the track.

The weather was really cold it was 1 degree. It was time to jump back into my gear and get back out on the track for my warm up session. When I was out on the track it was so cold that my fingers started to freeze up as it did on Saturday morning. The first couple of laps I did the bike was sliding all over as the track temperature was so cold. The track was awesome and so different you would have really hard breaking points and you have off cambered corners there also was lots of high speed corners. Warm up had finished so I made my way back into the pits.

I had three hour to the main race so I got out of my gear and got into something a little warmer. It was freezing It was 30 minutes until my race was going to start my legs were shaking. I was so nervous, there was so much going through my mind. It was finally time to get onto the track and line up. I got to my grid position and turned off my engine.

We had five minutes in that time so I had a few pictures taken with Troy Corser. He also helped me heaps over the weekend. I had 1 minute to go so I started my bike. The red lights came on then they went off and off we went. I got a riper start, I gained heap of places. I came into the first corner, there were bikes everywhere and there was heaps of competition going on so many riders dicing in and out. After 12 laps I was sweating like crazy. I was on the last lap and got held up with a pack of other riders. I was trying to work out a way to get pass them.

The plan I had was to dive underneath them on the last corner but I was just not close enough to make the pass which would have been great but in the end I had to settle for 32nd. Arrived back in Australia on the 21st of December and was glad to be home in time to spend Xmas with my family. It was an awesome experience, I am now focused on winning the 2008 Australian Metrakit Championship so that I can go again at the end of the year.

Adrian Di-Giandomenico