Superbiker 2004
Yo.
So now I'm back from Superbiker. I have slept and am now gonna use up 3-4h of my birthday to write the report about it all.
For you out there not familiar with Superbiker I can just say that it is what 6-days is for Enduro, X-Games for Freestyle MX, Beer to Belgians or milk for Swedes. In short the most important single race in the world for us Supermoto freaks. 250-350 riders show up. Most on bikes but some on toy.. eh, Quads. Mix this with a legendary track full of spectacular slides of wich every one is full with 5 lines of spectators. 10-15000 is not uncommon. What do you get?
A REALLY, REALLY NICE WEEKEND...
I have had some problems with my engine and gearbox during the last months or so but coming up to Superbiker it was all solved with one big EXPENSIVE pile of parts. Well not expensive compaired to what it could have been, but still. I got some well needed help from Fesial and Joramo to sort out the nagging problems and for that I am very greatful. My bike now stands with more or less a complete new engine. The old powerplant had served me well but 15 races and +/- 5h MX (effective)/week since mars had slowly but surely taken it's toll out of my war horse. Bearings started to break too often and the gearbox was not perfect. After a while one of these bearing breakdowns cracked my block. So, the pile of stuff included:
New blocks, new cylinder, piston, most of the gears, ALL bearings, some cosmetics and a new connecting rod.
Then check how much that would cost you full price and you will understand that everything but almost getting it for free will dig a big hole in your pocket. Natrually the generator of my truck and the bill for my tires came the same week so now I have a great bike, a nice truck, NO MONEY and possibly a cancelled vacation to the West Indies during X-mas. Oh, yeah. Add to that a less than perfectly happy girlfriend. But, as I said:
I do have a great bike again.
)
So, maybe it's time to talk some about Superbiker then.
I got contacted by a old friend in the Swedish Supermoto community a few weeks before the race and he was looking for a way to realise his plans to go to Mettet to watch the event. As he was going alone I invited him to stay in our luxurious race truck (it has a working generator, hasn't it) and he bought airplane tickets. A week in advance Sara the backbone in the team (I now know) cancelled to go to a survival thingie in the Ardennes. Survival in the forrest for Belgian people sounded to me like taking part in an event, NOT drink beer for 12 hours and then camp somewhere to make up for the lost time without beer. But, they actually had hell of a tough weekend, they did drink beer though.
I was quite confident that it would be more or less the same if somewhat more lonley to ride to the track. Maybe a bit more work getting something to eat and a bit less nagging about walking into the truck with my shoes on (wich it was), but I had underestimated the amount of organisation she actually adds to the team effort that racing is. And I didn't think that there was so many places to hide stuff like forks and knifes, spices, pens for pitboards etc in our quite small truck as there apparently is. I learned that after you eat, the plates get dirty. And the worst part of all was that they were not clean the next time we were gonna eat. The sometimes itching feeling about the pig I might actually be is effectively put on an arms lenght with pure denial and with the (for me) very logical fact that I did polish her wheels of her KTM last week or I did clean the kitchen 2 weeks ago. Denial has proven to be the most effective method however.
My bike was tuned in on the moto cross-track. 3h/day saturday to tuesday. I needed that, on saturday I was really tired already after 30 mins but on wednesday I was back to my old condition again. Spent a lot of time learning how to turn the bike in the air using the brake and gas and got it to work reasonably. Wednesday I spent 6h cleaning my Husaberg and started to pack the truck. Thursday I was ready, did some shopping and felt quite ready for the weekend. Johan Varland (the Swedish guy) landed on Charleroi friday afternoon and I departed Dendermonde at around 4pm. For once an uneventful trip and I felt really really prepaired. Kind of a nice feeling that I don't have that often.
Arriving in Mettet I inscribed, picked up the one and only Varland and started to look for friendly ground to set up camp. Bandit had claimed a piece of paddock and guarded it with his life so we didn't have to fight for a good spot.
The weekend had started...
Bandit who have a beer sponsor that gives him a crate of beer to consume for every race (he he) in exchange for a sticker on the truck, more or less, now had upgraded the sponsorship to a complete tap with kegs and all. This was set up in his van wich for the weekend served as a self service beer station. Only in Belgium!
Yves was there, Me, Joost, Ruben, Harmen and a guy with a beast of a dog called Psycho. Psycho is a dog that you can beat up with a pretty stiff piece of iron tube for fifteen minutes and he still wouldn't be angry because you didn't do him any harm. A black 70kg chunk of pure evil. Well, he looks that way. Scratch him behind the ear and he is on his back purring like a kitten. My kitten actually IS more agressive than I think that dog can ever be, but... He looks mean.
Superbiker is a race devided into two classes. Much like in Greek mythology. You have Bikers challenge, a class for SM-riders (mortals). Secondly you have Starbiker (Gods) consisting of people merited mostly with a lifetime of accomplishments in various forms of motorcycle racing. These are all automaticly qualified and they are mostly what differs this race from normal SM racing. In between you have the Supermoto stars (halfgods) that has to ride with us mortals and earn their way into heaven (The final) just as we do. Bikers challenge is a class of 250 riders fighting for 24 positions in the final via qualifications, semifinals and repechage in competition with the Half Gods (Supermoto full Pro's).
5 qualification groups, I was in the second starting at aprox 9.30 saturday morning. We all got two qualifications of 25 minutes, one on saturday morning at one in the afternoon. Semifinals, repechages and finals were all on sunday. Every qualification group held 50 riders. 12 qualified. If you missed out there you went to 4 groups of repechage out of wich 5 (of 50) qualified back into the semi. This is hard. A lot of the worlds best riders are at Superbiker. Add to that "The wall" as the new jump was called. This year there was a jump made out of concrete that had a 45deg upslope that then fased out on the other side. Through this jump went a walking tunnel just to give you an idea of how high it is. 10m before was a high speed small table top. Misjudge any of all the parameters going into this section of the track and you stay there, hurting. One swede overtook the first tabletop and landed on his face in the concrete 2'nd jump splitting his helmet and fracturing his neck. Bertrand did the same badly fracturing his keybone in 5 places. I was close a few times but managed to not ride over my abilities here loosing some time instead.
Friday evening we just put up the tent, fixed Varlands bed in my truck. Drank a few beers out of the tap in Bandits van and then went to bed. Varland btw. He said hi when we met then he disapeared as soon as we rolled into the paddock. I didn't see him for a while until I saw an ass at the fence body leaning over so I only saw the ass. That was Varlands. He was puking his guts out from something he ate at the (swedish) airport. He came back. But seemingly he liked his spot at the fence because soon his ass was there again. Later that night he got a medical to drive him to a pharmacy to collect drugs and he also got a list of things to eat of wich I had nothing. Saturday he was better and from saturday evening he was ok again.
Saturday... Time to start riding.
It was cold, damn cold. I opted for a rain in front thinking that the 5deg tarmac would heat that tire faster and more efficiently. Not a good idea. In all 3 highspeed corners I suffered from terrible understeering and shifted to a slick for the second quali session.
Entering the track on wich I've ridden a few times before I was happy. This is not the best track in the world but it sure is fun as it has tons of sliding time attached to every lap. The jump was not as difficult as it first seemed but to be really fast here you needed to be of mx-background or just crazy. I am somewhat crazy but not a complete loony so I didn't push it too hard here. Also entering the mx I lost some time the first 10m before I felt confident and went on the throttle. Add to that the understeering in the highspeed corners.
Varland was trackside with my pitboard and instructions to give me place only. I went like a jojo from 10-17 but just couldn't push any harder.
Ended up 18th 0.4s from 12th. Not so good but 0.4 seconds is not that much.
Coming up to the second quali session I got a slick on in front and went to the track. My front suspension was stiffened 4! clicks as it went to the bottom hitting the wall before. Now the bike behaved much better, almost no understeering, jumps were better and my times went down quite much even though the track was slowed down a bit for security reasons. The problem was that as my times went down, so they did for a lot of the other riders as well. Was 9th, 12th, 15th for a long time and then went to 19th during the last lap. I was 1 second faster on a 1 second slower track but it was not enough to qualify directly. Bertrand, Dellanoy, Godfroid osv were in my group as well just to name a few. It is tough at superbiker. The track is reasonably good for me and on the tarmac I don't loose much to anyone but the rougher mx cost me dearly. Still I was disapointed especially as I know that it is really hell to requalify from a repechage fighting for 5 positions out of 50. The disapointment lessened a bit with the knowledge that I still had at least one time to ride and a lot of nice racing to watch. And in Superbiker I have nothing to really fight for anyway. Here I purely ride for the fun of it all. A few beers out of Bandits van helped a bit too...)
During this afternoon and evening we watched Starbiker training. I shot a few videos of Mike Metzeger showjumping on the concrete jump while qualifying. He's in the air anyway so why not make the crowd happy. Later that night he made a backflip in the Freestyle MX-show. The first I've seen live, increadible.
Evening was spent bbq'ing and just strolling around in the (damn) cold. Dinner was nice but it missed some from lack of feminine touch I would say. Or probably it was just me. Still, even Varland was eating so it has to have been at least eatable. We hit the beds around midnight.
Sunday, last chance...
I was in the last repechage race out of four and therefore we got an hour extra sleep. The bike was standing ready to race and my confidence in the bike was on top again. Power was great and it sounded great. I undercutted 2'nd-4'th gear and now the gears stay in nicely as well. Any result was due to me. Bike is good enough to win with.
Friend after friend came back from their repechage races unqualified and I knew this was gonna be a tough one. My position was good however. 8th on the grid. 2'nd row to the right. The first corner on Mettet you need to take on the inside so that you can take the second one on the outside if needed. Get cought on the inside in the 2'nd and you're gonna have to stay and wait for everyone to pass before you can go. My start was not perfect. Came through the 2'nd corner as 10-12th I would say and had a lot of work to do. 3'rd lap I slided into the corner after start finish and a bike was lying on the ground burning, in flames. It was well out of the way so there was no red flag. It was just an old 620 so...
2 laps after that there was a red flag though and we lined up for a restart. I had been on 11th so it was good. After a while they restarted us for another full race. This time I got a great start, went into first corner as 5'th kept it through 2'nd but almost highsided on the acceleration and lost a few positions. I was down on 11-12th and started to fight for it. Passed a few riders here and there of wich the last one was Trevor Pope in the slide on the backside of the roundabout at the frituur. He clung on like a leach though and I didn't get rid of him until the last lap when he got held up by a slower rider that I got passed just in time before a corner. Finishline standing on the saddle wheelying. 9th... The bike had done well, my Doma broke during the last laps but that's a problem for someone with better knowledge in welding than me.
Daniel was out. It had, however, been a super nice race. Some bad assed dogfights and a lot of pure fun riding can't make you that disapointed, can it...
I packed up, and we went to see Ruben race in the Semi as he had outdone himself and qualified on a nothing less but fantastic time. He even went through from the Semi into the Biker Challenge Final but there natrually it stopped. This is a fantastic result still as there was a lot of quite well known names that didn't make it that far. The sadest part of it all is that Ruben is gonna stop racing after this season just now when he is getting really really fast. But, he has his reasons and it's nothing much to do about that I guess. A pity it surely is though both for the racing and for the paddocks, a nicer guy you have to look for. We race a lot together as we both do the championship in Holland together as well as the Belgian one + we do some training together also. Hopefully he will not be able to stay away from it all...
As Varland left in his C3 rental I also decided to skip the Super final as I was getting really tired and didn't want to fall asleep on my way back home.
I have tons of pics from Superbiker and some videos as well. Gonna try to post the highlights somewhere.
www.supermotard-racing.com
Sponsors are there and are all to thank for my adventures.
Daniel
Yo.
So now I'm back from Superbiker. I have slept and am now gonna use up 3-4h of my birthday to write the report about it all.
For you out there not familiar with Superbiker I can just say that it is what 6-days is for Enduro, X-Games for Freestyle MX, Beer to Belgians or milk for Swedes. In short the most important single race in the world for us Supermoto freaks. 250-350 riders show up. Most on bikes but some on toy.. eh, Quads. Mix this with a legendary track full of spectacular slides of wich every one is full with 5 lines of spectators. 10-15000 is not uncommon. What do you get?
A REALLY, REALLY NICE WEEKEND...
I have had some problems with my engine and gearbox during the last months or so but coming up to Superbiker it was all solved with one big EXPENSIVE pile of parts. Well not expensive compaired to what it could have been, but still. I got some well needed help from Fesial and Joramo to sort out the nagging problems and for that I am very greatful. My bike now stands with more or less a complete new engine. The old powerplant had served me well but 15 races and +/- 5h MX (effective)/week since mars had slowly but surely taken it's toll out of my war horse. Bearings started to break too often and the gearbox was not perfect. After a while one of these bearing breakdowns cracked my block. So, the pile of stuff included:
New blocks, new cylinder, piston, most of the gears, ALL bearings, some cosmetics and a new connecting rod.
Then check how much that would cost you full price and you will understand that everything but almost getting it for free will dig a big hole in your pocket. Natrually the generator of my truck and the bill for my tires came the same week so now I have a great bike, a nice truck, NO MONEY and possibly a cancelled vacation to the West Indies during X-mas. Oh, yeah. Add to that a less than perfectly happy girlfriend. But, as I said:
I do have a great bike again.
) So, maybe it's time to talk some about Superbiker then.
I got contacted by a old friend in the Swedish Supermoto community a few weeks before the race and he was looking for a way to realise his plans to go to Mettet to watch the event. As he was going alone I invited him to stay in our luxurious race truck (it has a working generator, hasn't it) and he bought airplane tickets. A week in advance Sara the backbone in the team (I now know) cancelled to go to a survival thingie in the Ardennes. Survival in the forrest for Belgian people sounded to me like taking part in an event, NOT drink beer for 12 hours and then camp somewhere to make up for the lost time without beer. But, they actually had hell of a tough weekend, they did drink beer though.
I was quite confident that it would be more or less the same if somewhat more lonley to ride to the track. Maybe a bit more work getting something to eat and a bit less nagging about walking into the truck with my shoes on (wich it was), but I had underestimated the amount of organisation she actually adds to the team effort that racing is. And I didn't think that there was so many places to hide stuff like forks and knifes, spices, pens for pitboards etc in our quite small truck as there apparently is. I learned that after you eat, the plates get dirty. And the worst part of all was that they were not clean the next time we were gonna eat. The sometimes itching feeling about the pig I might actually be is effectively put on an arms lenght with pure denial and with the (for me) very logical fact that I did polish her wheels of her KTM last week or I did clean the kitchen 2 weeks ago. Denial has proven to be the most effective method however.
My bike was tuned in on the moto cross-track. 3h/day saturday to tuesday. I needed that, on saturday I was really tired already after 30 mins but on wednesday I was back to my old condition again. Spent a lot of time learning how to turn the bike in the air using the brake and gas and got it to work reasonably. Wednesday I spent 6h cleaning my Husaberg and started to pack the truck. Thursday I was ready, did some shopping and felt quite ready for the weekend. Johan Varland (the Swedish guy) landed on Charleroi friday afternoon and I departed Dendermonde at around 4pm. For once an uneventful trip and I felt really really prepaired. Kind of a nice feeling that I don't have that often.
Arriving in Mettet I inscribed, picked up the one and only Varland and started to look for friendly ground to set up camp. Bandit had claimed a piece of paddock and guarded it with his life so we didn't have to fight for a good spot.
The weekend had started...
Bandit who have a beer sponsor that gives him a crate of beer to consume for every race (he he) in exchange for a sticker on the truck, more or less, now had upgraded the sponsorship to a complete tap with kegs and all. This was set up in his van wich for the weekend served as a self service beer station. Only in Belgium!
Yves was there, Me, Joost, Ruben, Harmen and a guy with a beast of a dog called Psycho. Psycho is a dog that you can beat up with a pretty stiff piece of iron tube for fifteen minutes and he still wouldn't be angry because you didn't do him any harm. A black 70kg chunk of pure evil. Well, he looks that way. Scratch him behind the ear and he is on his back purring like a kitten. My kitten actually IS more agressive than I think that dog can ever be, but... He looks mean.
Superbiker is a race devided into two classes. Much like in Greek mythology. You have Bikers challenge, a class for SM-riders (mortals). Secondly you have Starbiker (Gods) consisting of people merited mostly with a lifetime of accomplishments in various forms of motorcycle racing. These are all automaticly qualified and they are mostly what differs this race from normal SM racing. In between you have the Supermoto stars (halfgods) that has to ride with us mortals and earn their way into heaven (The final) just as we do. Bikers challenge is a class of 250 riders fighting for 24 positions in the final via qualifications, semifinals and repechage in competition with the Half Gods (Supermoto full Pro's).
5 qualification groups, I was in the second starting at aprox 9.30 saturday morning. We all got two qualifications of 25 minutes, one on saturday morning at one in the afternoon. Semifinals, repechages and finals were all on sunday. Every qualification group held 50 riders. 12 qualified. If you missed out there you went to 4 groups of repechage out of wich 5 (of 50) qualified back into the semi. This is hard. A lot of the worlds best riders are at Superbiker. Add to that "The wall" as the new jump was called. This year there was a jump made out of concrete that had a 45deg upslope that then fased out on the other side. Through this jump went a walking tunnel just to give you an idea of how high it is. 10m before was a high speed small table top. Misjudge any of all the parameters going into this section of the track and you stay there, hurting. One swede overtook the first tabletop and landed on his face in the concrete 2'nd jump splitting his helmet and fracturing his neck. Bertrand did the same badly fracturing his keybone in 5 places. I was close a few times but managed to not ride over my abilities here loosing some time instead.
Friday evening we just put up the tent, fixed Varlands bed in my truck. Drank a few beers out of the tap in Bandits van and then went to bed. Varland btw. He said hi when we met then he disapeared as soon as we rolled into the paddock. I didn't see him for a while until I saw an ass at the fence body leaning over so I only saw the ass. That was Varlands. He was puking his guts out from something he ate at the (swedish) airport. He came back. But seemingly he liked his spot at the fence because soon his ass was there again. Later that night he got a medical to drive him to a pharmacy to collect drugs and he also got a list of things to eat of wich I had nothing. Saturday he was better and from saturday evening he was ok again.
Saturday... Time to start riding.
It was cold, damn cold. I opted for a rain in front thinking that the 5deg tarmac would heat that tire faster and more efficiently. Not a good idea. In all 3 highspeed corners I suffered from terrible understeering and shifted to a slick for the second quali session.
Entering the track on wich I've ridden a few times before I was happy. This is not the best track in the world but it sure is fun as it has tons of sliding time attached to every lap. The jump was not as difficult as it first seemed but to be really fast here you needed to be of mx-background or just crazy. I am somewhat crazy but not a complete loony so I didn't push it too hard here. Also entering the mx I lost some time the first 10m before I felt confident and went on the throttle. Add to that the understeering in the highspeed corners.
Varland was trackside with my pitboard and instructions to give me place only. I went like a jojo from 10-17 but just couldn't push any harder.
Ended up 18th 0.4s from 12th. Not so good but 0.4 seconds is not that much.
Coming up to the second quali session I got a slick on in front and went to the track. My front suspension was stiffened 4! clicks as it went to the bottom hitting the wall before. Now the bike behaved much better, almost no understeering, jumps were better and my times went down quite much even though the track was slowed down a bit for security reasons. The problem was that as my times went down, so they did for a lot of the other riders as well. Was 9th, 12th, 15th for a long time and then went to 19th during the last lap. I was 1 second faster on a 1 second slower track but it was not enough to qualify directly. Bertrand, Dellanoy, Godfroid osv were in my group as well just to name a few. It is tough at superbiker. The track is reasonably good for me and on the tarmac I don't loose much to anyone but the rougher mx cost me dearly. Still I was disapointed especially as I know that it is really hell to requalify from a repechage fighting for 5 positions out of 50. The disapointment lessened a bit with the knowledge that I still had at least one time to ride and a lot of nice racing to watch. And in Superbiker I have nothing to really fight for anyway. Here I purely ride for the fun of it all. A few beers out of Bandits van helped a bit too...
)During this afternoon and evening we watched Starbiker training. I shot a few videos of Mike Metzeger showjumping on the concrete jump while qualifying. He's in the air anyway so why not make the crowd happy. Later that night he made a backflip in the Freestyle MX-show. The first I've seen live, increadible.
Evening was spent bbq'ing and just strolling around in the (damn) cold. Dinner was nice but it missed some from lack of feminine touch I would say. Or probably it was just me. Still, even Varland was eating so it has to have been at least eatable. We hit the beds around midnight.
Sunday, last chance...
I was in the last repechage race out of four and therefore we got an hour extra sleep. The bike was standing ready to race and my confidence in the bike was on top again. Power was great and it sounded great. I undercutted 2'nd-4'th gear and now the gears stay in nicely as well. Any result was due to me. Bike is good enough to win with.
Friend after friend came back from their repechage races unqualified and I knew this was gonna be a tough one. My position was good however. 8th on the grid. 2'nd row to the right. The first corner on Mettet you need to take on the inside so that you can take the second one on the outside if needed. Get cought on the inside in the 2'nd and you're gonna have to stay and wait for everyone to pass before you can go. My start was not perfect. Came through the 2'nd corner as 10-12th I would say and had a lot of work to do. 3'rd lap I slided into the corner after start finish and a bike was lying on the ground burning, in flames. It was well out of the way so there was no red flag. It was just an old 620 so...
2 laps after that there was a red flag though and we lined up for a restart. I had been on 11th so it was good. After a while they restarted us for another full race. This time I got a great start, went into first corner as 5'th kept it through 2'nd but almost highsided on the acceleration and lost a few positions. I was down on 11-12th and started to fight for it. Passed a few riders here and there of wich the last one was Trevor Pope in the slide on the backside of the roundabout at the frituur. He clung on like a leach though and I didn't get rid of him until the last lap when he got held up by a slower rider that I got passed just in time before a corner. Finishline standing on the saddle wheelying. 9th... The bike had done well, my Doma broke during the last laps but that's a problem for someone with better knowledge in welding than me.
Daniel was out. It had, however, been a super nice race. Some bad assed dogfights and a lot of pure fun riding can't make you that disapointed, can it...
I packed up, and we went to see Ruben race in the Semi as he had outdone himself and qualified on a nothing less but fantastic time. He even went through from the Semi into the Biker Challenge Final but there natrually it stopped. This is a fantastic result still as there was a lot of quite well known names that didn't make it that far. The sadest part of it all is that Ruben is gonna stop racing after this season just now when he is getting really really fast. But, he has his reasons and it's nothing much to do about that I guess. A pity it surely is though both for the racing and for the paddocks, a nicer guy you have to look for. We race a lot together as we both do the championship in Holland together as well as the Belgian one + we do some training together also. Hopefully he will not be able to stay away from it all...
As Varland left in his C3 rental I also decided to skip the Super final as I was getting really tired and didn't want to fall asleep on my way back home.
I have tons of pics from Superbiker and some videos as well. Gonna try to post the highlights somewhere.
www.supermotard-racing.com
Sponsors are there and are all to thank for my adventures.
Daniel
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The show must go on!! Vad skulle hända om någon började göra sånt på ett SVEMO-arrangerat race ? Antagligen diskad... 
