The 2007 regs draft regs have now been publish on the RGB community website www.bikecars.co.uk. One key change in the regs for next year has been to Class B, which is now being defined as allowing Mid Engined cars and any engine under 1000CC. Crucially however the min weight limit for both A and B is the same
This is important because up until this year all Mid engined cars like mine had to race in Class A. Therefore to be remotely competitive you had to run either an Hiyabusa engine or a ZX12R. Both of these engines need a dry sump system if they are to survive under race conditions.
One of the ironies of running a dry sump is that while it protects your engine it also add a whole bunch of new ways that you can break the engine, the tank can fail, the pump can fail any one of the dozen or so hose connections can fail and so on. All of which will blow the engine. It’s also a fairly heavy bunch of kit.
Now my car (and me) are well over the weight limit of 560kg for Class A and I need to shed some 60KG from the Car,chassis and driver.
The new range of 2004,2005, 2006 1000cc “Screamer” engines like the Yamaha R1, Suzuki GSXR-1000 and the Fireblade 1000 are only about 10BHP down on the ZX12r because they benefit from recent technological advances, but crucially most don’t need a dry sump system and the engine can weigh up to 20KG less than my ZX12R.
So being allowed into class B, with an engine that is much lighter will help me achieve my goal of weight loss in the car and a less complex install. And also this years class B has been pretty sparsely populated with the best Class B driver only being about 3 seconds a lap quicker than me, as opposed to the leading class A drivers still being some 7-9 secs a lap quicker than me. So maybe I can compete for some class B silverware.
OK so I’ll never win outright. but to be honest I was never going to do that anyway as there is way to much talent up at the front of the grid. BUT I can aspire to closing a 3 second gap to get to the front of class B, the 9 seconds to get to the front of class A might as well be a country mile!
So the plan for next season is
- Swap the engine, dump the dry sump and get a lighter simpler install. I’m going to use a CBR 1000 RR. Compete in the current chassis next year gaining further experience as I’m still very much a novice
- Build a new lightweight chassis over the winter\next season so that I can actually get down to the weight limit … Remember my car is the prototype chassis and bit heavier then the current versions
- Lose some weight!
And to this end I’ve already sold the zx12r to a Cam7 friend who wants to put it in his Lotus Europa. .
and I thought I was a nutter 
So I’d better not blow it up between now and the end of the season