Testing went well the week preceding our first race on Aug 14 at New Hamphsire Internation Speedway. Running without a fairing and on 93 octane pump fuel we were achieving speeds of around 65mph, I was at the time hoping for an honest 60mph so I was happy with the results. Final tuning brought us to the conclusion that running a 16mm carb with a 68 main jet and a 40 intermediate jet was the way to go. I set the point gap at .014 to both advance the ignition timing somewhat and to help reduce point float at high rpms. I opened up the plug gap to .030 and went with a NGK C7HSA plug.

    Our first race was on Saturday at 1:30 pm. We left Saratoga NY at about 7:45 and made it to the track around 12 noon. We had just enough time to unpack everything and move into the pit garage. We did some more testing in the pit area with the fairing installed and using 110 octane race fuel. The plug looked good on the race fuel, perhaps just a little on the lean side. I gassed up the bike and Mary got into her leathers.
There would be two classes of 50cc bikes running together in this race. The Classic 50's limited to 4 speed transmissions, 18mm carbs and 1969 or earlier models, and the Super 50s which could have 5 speed or more gearboxes, unlimited carb size and be of model year 1982 or older. We would be running in the Classic 50 class.
    Mary was placed on the front row of the grid, next to the pole position. She made a good start and was into turn one first by a good margin, the two strokes were slow off the line but building up speed quickly. By turn 2 the Suzuki that was favored to win was right behind her and passed her coming out of turn three as she had picked a poor line through the corner. The Suzuki was very fast as was it's rider Phil Turkington, he was streaching out his lead as the lap progressed. The Suzuki and the CD-1a where increasing their lead throughout lap two, during lap three Mary seemed to get a feel for the bike and started closing the gap to the Suzuki. On the third lap Mary continued to close the gap but it would not be fast enough and Turkington on the Suzuki would take the overall win. We did however win our Classic 50's class which is a fine start to the 99 season for us.

	The CD-1a in the pit garage, Mary relaxing a moment before the race
	Going through turn 9 at speed. Note that her right hand is not on the brake lever, good girl, on the gas the whole way.
	Out of turn 9 and down a short straight towards 10. Looks like her head is up a little high, tuck down behind that windscreen Mary. You can just see a little slack in the bottom side of the chain, that means she's hard on the throttle right now.