28 March 2005
Round 1 – Assen Holland 500km
Who would have guessed how the weekend would have turned out! Team Principal, Miles Hutchins’ wildest dreams would he have expected the weekend to end the way it did.

The World Endurance Championship is made up of varying race distances.

The Championship is made up of many different types of teams. Full works teams such as Suzuki Nr. 2, do they borrow Corser’s and Kagayama’s engines going all out to win a World Championship after Yamaha won it in 2004, mega funded teams such as Yamaha Austria and teams such as Diablo 666 Kawasaki, run by knowledgeable management, talented and fast young riders, mechanical genius’s and the pure out and out bikers who want to help when and where they can. Diablo 666 can only dream of Suzuki’s testing budget alone with works riders wages running into thousand of euros and millions of yen.

This first race of the season at Assen, is one of the shorter sprint races being run over only 500 km (130 laps) which would have a race duration of approx 3hrs 15 minutes. To say the Team were up for it is something of an understatement after the long winter lay off.

The rider line up for Diablo 666 for the 2005 season is to be the successful combination of young Brits James Hutchins and Kevin Falcke, joined once again by experienced Dresden based Steve Mizera. This being the line up which successfully in 2004 competed at the final round at Vallelunga, Italy and secured a fine 9th position. Diablo 666 last year had started the year brilliantly in 2004 with a 7th placing at the season opener. Could the Team repeat or even improve upon this? It turned out yes and yes definitely yes!

Diablo’s partner Team had the same riders who were in attendance at the Valencia test, namely, Marcel Kellenberger, David Morillon and Patrick Muff.

However, three days before the Team set off for Assen, the organisers in their infinite wisdom decided to alter the programme of events! The Team were due to arrive at the circuit Friday morning for signing on and bike scrutineering. Free and Qualifying practice were all to have been on the Saturday, a very short time indeed for the riders to get up to speed. The race being on the Monday, no noisy motorbikes being allowed to run, as is the tradition, in Holland on the Sabbath.

With track improvements having been carried out at Assen over the winter, additional chicanes had been introduced to one of the fastest flowing sections of the circuit, as seems to be the norm these days following a superstock class rider death, it was decided to have an extra test day on the Thursday! Team Principal, Miles Hutchins, was not a happy man to say the least. Imagine having organised the family holiday, the operator e-mails you to say, turn up two days earlier. Not many of us would be ecstatic would we?

Imagine therefore having organised, ferries, flights, hotels, race bike transport, car hire etc for a race team membership of 12, converging from different parts of Europe. You can imagine Miles’ justified frustration. “If all permanent WEC teams can test on the Thursday then fine, if not, no teams should get the unfair advantage of this extra day. We just cannot alter our plans at this late date, the organisers have had all winter to finalise the weekends schedule, how can they change it now? Bolliger Kawasaki are in the same boat, don’t they realise some of us have to work to earn a living to be able to afford to come racing? We are not professionals like the Valentino Rossi’s of this world?” commented the normally cool and collected Miles. Outward appearances can sometimes be very misleading of course!

Having arrived at the circuit, as originally planned on the Friday before the race the riders signed in and had the bike scrutinised. The team were looking forward to putting all the hard work done at Valencia into a top ten qualifying placing.

Remember this will be only Diablo666’s second full season of racing at World Championship level, having initially entered the fray in 2003 with three races at A1 Ring, Oschersleben and Vallelunga, after Kevin and James wished to form their own Team, unhappy with the way the Trackdaze Team was run. Diablo had risen from the ashes!.

The weather was as usual, variable to say the least for this season opener. First free practice would be run in wet conditions and what a turn up, Suzuki No. 2 as expected at the pole with three Kawasaki’s in close attendance, RMT 21, Bolliger and Diablo 666, were we going to pray for rain for Monday’s race? The weather improved during the day with all other sessions being run in dry conditions.

Some WEC teams had been able to take advantage of the extra day of free practice including most prominently Suzuki No. 2 and Yamaha Austria.

The Diablo and Bolliger squads would only have two, one hour sessions on Saturday morning to set up the bikes, not an easy task, before getting down to two 30 minute qualifying sessions only per rider in the afternoon. We would see if any teams had indeed gained an advantage from the extra track practice.

With 34 bikes entered, the racetrack was going to be like the M25 on a Monday morning and the riders would have to have their brains in gear from the word go to avoid trouble! At least they wouldn’t have to worry about the speed cameras, just the dodgy new chicane! First reports were that this new addition added about 6 seconds to the average lap time.

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