elcome to Dr Louigi's tech pages, I hope you enjoy them. If you have any questions or need any advice regarding any of these articles then please feel free to email at louigi@ducatitrader.co.uk. Enjoy!

So you have done your track day, felt pretty good in the quick group and only got overtaken by the bloke with slicks on. So your ready to go racing are you?

Firstly look at your riding kit, will it go through scruiteneering? You will need one piece leathers, an up to date helmet that is a good fit, good pair of gloves and boots. All this will be checked. You will also require a dog tag for around your neck with your name and date of birth, put your blood group on if you know it.

Join a club that preferably has a class for your bike, i.e. Sound of Thunder if you want to race your Ducati. The club will send you a form to apply for your ACU race licence, presuming you already have a full bike licence you will have to apply for an intermediate novice licence and tick the box for the orange novice jacket which you be required to wear for at least 10 meetings. You will require an eye test for your first application, which you can get done at any opticians, fill the rest of the form in with the required fee and your club membership form, then post it off.

The club will send you the regulations for all the meetings it is running that year so you can choose which circuits you would like to race at. In the meantime you can get on with preparing the bike. Everything that you have to do is written in the ACU handbook (somewhere) Read it!

Just say you want to race your road bike but still want to ride on the road next week. Firstly I would strongly recommend that you purchase aftermarket bodywork and put the standard stuff in the loft, this will do away with the lights. Remove the indicators and numberplate and remove the speedo cable. If you have rubber front brake pipes, they will have to be replaced for braided steel and a TWO pipe set-up, no joints. Replace the fluid with racing stuff or it will boil. The bore and stroke will need to be written on the engine for noise regulations, You will have to drill & lockwire your sump bung, the oil filler bung as well and put a jubilee clip around the oil filter and lockwire that up. From this year you will have to fit a bottom chain guard, and they may get hot on your engine coolant, as you can only run water, so be warned. You will also be required to remove the stand. Make sure the machine is clean and tidy with no loose bodywork and in a well serviced condition.

The scruteneers always expect a Ducati entered for club racing to be perfect and will go out of their way to find a problem with it, naturally they think you have got more money than sense to put a piece of two wheeled exotica up against a bunch of fairing bashing CBR600 loons.

So that's about it, other than having your head shaved the day before the meeting so everybody thinks that you are hard and they won't try to knock you off. Just turn up at the track, get all your stuff scruiteneered, sign on, stick your numbers on if you haven't already done it, stop biting your nails and give it large.

Enjoy Louigi