5 October 2003
Round 8 – Vallelunga Italy
After the disappointment of the Team’s first race ending crash at Oschersleben, all was looking good for the final round of the 2003 World Endurance Championship. The objective was to score the Team’s first World Championship points.

With Warren Watson still sidelined from his Oschersleben crash, Miles Hutchins, Team Principal, enrolled the hugely experienced Kiwi rider Shaun Harris to the Diablo 666 as rider No. 3, joining up with Team regulars James Hutchins and Kevin Falcke.

The Vallelunga Round is one of the shortest races on the calendar. Being just a 200 mile sprint race many teams run with just two riders although during the race the bikes must still stop twice. Diablo 666 decided on a three rider line up.

With the number of wild card entries increasing the grid to 43 bikes, the race was going to be fast and furious to say the least. Brollies being used to keep the rain off – not the sun!

Qualifying did not go as well as expected with the Team all being new to the track and qualifying in 23rd place. Much was going to be needed from the riders during the race.

The race order decided upon was James to start, Kevin to run the middle leg with Shaun riding the final leg.

During the whole time out in Italy the weather had been glorious with temperatures warranting liberal application of sunscreen products. This was not to be the case on race day however. Shortly before the formation of the grid a sudden downpour meant a change to all the teams race tactics.

Many of the teams elected to stay with slick tyres, some going to full wets. Diablo 666 made the choice of running with intermediate tyres front and rear. Again the Team was hampered with not having full quick release wheels but Chief Mechanics Nathan Columbine and Geoff Randall had conjured up a trick system meaning that the rear wheel at least could be changed in a faster time than normal.

With the Le Mans type grid formed with different bikes on different tyre combinations the first part of the race was going to be interesting to say the least. The lights changed and James roared off managing to gain many places in the first stint, at the end of which the Team had moved up to a very respectable 12th position. The first change was made with James handing over to Kevin who maintained the Teams position until handing over to Shaun for the final run to the flag. Kevin had been up to 6th position but as Shaun crossed the line the Team were ecstatic with a final position of 8th. We had done it at only our third meeting; Diablo 666 had scored its first World Endurance Championship points.

We had been helped by the one but last lap crash of our pit partners, Bolliger Kawasaki crashing lifting us up one position. As can be seen from the photo above motorcycle racing can be extremely dangerous. The bike was a total write off. The rider fortunately suffered only minor cuts and bruises!

What was even more pleasing with the Team’s result was that Diablo 666 had beaten into 10th position the Trackdaze 11 bike ridden by Damian Cudlin and Nick Pilborough as well as many other top WEC regulars.

With 8 points in the bag the Team were finally on the old scoreboard and finished the season in 30th position. In 2004 it would be different.

After much celebrating the entire Team left Vallelunga satisfied with a job well done and looking forward to the start of the 2004 season. Unfortunately, that is five months away.

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