Monsterdood
Mon 6/5/06, 2:40PM
Well, I got everything sorted on the SV and was ready to get back out there this month. First thing Saturday at the track, I put some new tires on the SV because I had no faith in the ones I crashed on. While the tires were getting mounted I took the EX out for the first practice session and just wanted to get back into a groove. Everything felt pretty good and I decided to work on my corner speed through turn 9 and turn 1 more than anything. I didn't worry about braking very deep for the corners, I just worried about carrying a bit more speed. I did the same on the SV using only 1 finger for all my braking. Working on corner speed let me start getting my knee down in turn 9, 1, and the entrance to turn 4. Unfortunately, this would mean I would wear out a knee puck this weekend leaning on my knee a little too much in the corners. Just working corner speed and not trying too hard, I managed a 1:37 on Saturday on the SV so things were looking pretty good post-crash.
On race day, I was in 4 races and took just one practice session on each bike. I started off in 500 Mod Prod and got a mediocre start but was able to pass a few folks in the first lap and was cruising in 5th at the time. I wasn't going to catch anyone in front of me and would check over my shoulder once in a while. Someone was slowly catching me and I tried to just put in consistent laps. Well JC had a mechanical from a battle for the lead putting me into 4th, but then Amy passed me pushing me back to 5th. She passed me on the 2nd to last lap or so and although I was able to stay with her I didn't quite have the speed anywhere to get by her. I might have had a chance on the last lap, but we got lapped by a couple of heavy weight bikes and I figured I should settle for my position rather than risk anything in my warm-up race.
Next I took the SV out for Formula Twins Lightweight, I got a decent start and was in 8th out of 17 off the start but caught a false neutral going through turn 2 with my foot accidentally touching the shifter. Catching neutral in the middle of a corner really messes up your line and the balance of the throttle and the leaning and I pulled in the clutch, ran wide, and collected myself. I clicked it back into gear, eased the clutch out and got back on the throttle. Cory Mann passed me on the inside and I spent the next couple of laps trying to catch back up to him. We ended up dicing back and forth for the rest of the race with a few guys chasing us 5 and 10 seconds back. It was great racing and we were each fast in different areas on the track so it made for a lot of fun. I was able to get a drive on him going through turn 5 and pass him up and over turn 6 and held him off for a small gap at the finish. Racing with Cory helped me do my new personnel best time of 1:35.5 seconds, a full second faster than last month.
Next was the Lightweight Twins race on my EX where I am in 2nd in points to Michael. The wave in front of gets the green flag and Michael takes off with them. Everyone is confused and can't figure out why he went, but he obviously didn't see the guy standing in front of us with the red flag since he was way over on the right side of the track on pole. I put that out of my head and focused on getting a good start. The green flag waves and I'm off. I hear and see Larry Cochran to my left and we are neck and neck going into turn 1. Last month he flew up the inside of me off the start and I decided I needed to be a little more aggressive and went a little deeper and crept inwards to make his line even tighter. It worked and I had the lead going through turn 1. I knew there were some fast EX's behind Larry so I wanted to just check out and hope they had a hard time getting by him.
I ran a semi-lonely race in the lead and never really saw anyone behind me except for people in the 1st wave (other class) lapping me. I kept thinking I need to keep up speed so no one catches me, but don't crash from the lead. I ended up passing Dan DeBry through turn 2 and he was off the pace. Turns out he had a mechanical so that was one of the fast EX's I could stop worrying about. I ended up catching and lapping Michael as he was coming to terms with a new size and brand of tires.
In the end, I was the only one in the class to not get lapped which means I pretty much did the last lap by myself and could only have lost if I crashed. I slowed down by about 1 second, but it would have been nice to have a pit board to tell me to cruise that last lap.... My second win and this should put me into the points lead for the class. There are plenty of bikes and riders who can circulate 4 or 5 seconds faster than me, but until they start showing up, I'll keep trying for the wins.
There was a little break for me to soak in my win and then late in the day I had my last race, 550 Superbike. I got a really good start and was a close 6th going through turn 1 and into 2. Ryan Sturz came flying by me in turn 2 on his FZR 400 and put me into 7th but I was still within spitting distance of the fast lead pack. I was really surprised I was able to stay so close all the way up to turn 9 but they all got through 9 a bit quicker than me and started to put the distance on me bit by bit. I knew someone was kinda close behind and pretty soon, Cory comes by me on the brakes going into turn 1. I was purposely not going so deep on the brakes but I was much faster through and out of turn 1 and passed him back almost every time. This went on for many laps in either turn 1 or 3 and then I got smart. If I was in front, I started my turn from closer to the middle of the track to really take away real estate on the inside. I then tried to gap him with my corner speed and I was able to pull a couple of second gap on him with a lap to go.
On the last lap I messed up turn 5 pretty good and lost my drive on the back straight and apparently he really closed the gap through turn 8 but I did pretty well through turn, dragging my knee and powered to the finish line through some oil dry powder on the left side of the track to try and throw up a smoke screen :) I took 7th out of 17 by 0.8 seconds over Cory and was super stoked. When I check the results, I saw I had a new personnel best of 1:34.8! I literally jumped up in the air when I saw that because it was way faster than I expected this weekend. I'm only 2-3 seconds off of an occasional podium and 3-5 seconds off the very fastest dudes (and girls!).
So I had a 5th, 8th, 1st, and 7th, a new personnel record to be proud of and a nice big trophy for the mantle. If they let me compete for the top rookie award, I should be in the lead with my 2 race wins. And I should be in the top 30 in club points so all in all it was a great weekend. One last note is my engine is weeping a bit of water out a gasket and needs a minor refresh to replace the base gaskets. Looks like I am going to give the bike to Zoran next week to redo the top end and also repair a leaky fork seal. As much as I like to work on vehicles, I just have too much going on to take a couple of weeks to work on it in my garage. Plus Zoran's the best with these SV650 engines so I think I actually trust him more than me on this one.....
Well, this has been a long race report, there was a lot to report so there ya go. Thanks to Gary for being my crew chief on Sunday and helping me out and thanks to my Dunlop tires for sticking real nice like and thanks to Eric (Clif Bar) for hooking me up with the Clif Blocks because they are really critical to give me the energy to get out there and race when I have the nauseous nervous feeling. And thanks for nothing to the Twin Works guys for putting me 3 positions lower racing the SV... :)
On race day, I was in 4 races and took just one practice session on each bike. I started off in 500 Mod Prod and got a mediocre start but was able to pass a few folks in the first lap and was cruising in 5th at the time. I wasn't going to catch anyone in front of me and would check over my shoulder once in a while. Someone was slowly catching me and I tried to just put in consistent laps. Well JC had a mechanical from a battle for the lead putting me into 4th, but then Amy passed me pushing me back to 5th. She passed me on the 2nd to last lap or so and although I was able to stay with her I didn't quite have the speed anywhere to get by her. I might have had a chance on the last lap, but we got lapped by a couple of heavy weight bikes and I figured I should settle for my position rather than risk anything in my warm-up race.
Next I took the SV out for Formula Twins Lightweight, I got a decent start and was in 8th out of 17 off the start but caught a false neutral going through turn 2 with my foot accidentally touching the shifter. Catching neutral in the middle of a corner really messes up your line and the balance of the throttle and the leaning and I pulled in the clutch, ran wide, and collected myself. I clicked it back into gear, eased the clutch out and got back on the throttle. Cory Mann passed me on the inside and I spent the next couple of laps trying to catch back up to him. We ended up dicing back and forth for the rest of the race with a few guys chasing us 5 and 10 seconds back. It was great racing and we were each fast in different areas on the track so it made for a lot of fun. I was able to get a drive on him going through turn 5 and pass him up and over turn 6 and held him off for a small gap at the finish. Racing with Cory helped me do my new personnel best time of 1:35.5 seconds, a full second faster than last month.
Next was the Lightweight Twins race on my EX where I am in 2nd in points to Michael. The wave in front of gets the green flag and Michael takes off with them. Everyone is confused and can't figure out why he went, but he obviously didn't see the guy standing in front of us with the red flag since he was way over on the right side of the track on pole. I put that out of my head and focused on getting a good start. The green flag waves and I'm off. I hear and see Larry Cochran to my left and we are neck and neck going into turn 1. Last month he flew up the inside of me off the start and I decided I needed to be a little more aggressive and went a little deeper and crept inwards to make his line even tighter. It worked and I had the lead going through turn 1. I knew there were some fast EX's behind Larry so I wanted to just check out and hope they had a hard time getting by him.
I ran a semi-lonely race in the lead and never really saw anyone behind me except for people in the 1st wave (other class) lapping me. I kept thinking I need to keep up speed so no one catches me, but don't crash from the lead. I ended up passing Dan DeBry through turn 2 and he was off the pace. Turns out he had a mechanical so that was one of the fast EX's I could stop worrying about. I ended up catching and lapping Michael as he was coming to terms with a new size and brand of tires.
In the end, I was the only one in the class to not get lapped which means I pretty much did the last lap by myself and could only have lost if I crashed. I slowed down by about 1 second, but it would have been nice to have a pit board to tell me to cruise that last lap.... My second win and this should put me into the points lead for the class. There are plenty of bikes and riders who can circulate 4 or 5 seconds faster than me, but until they start showing up, I'll keep trying for the wins.
There was a little break for me to soak in my win and then late in the day I had my last race, 550 Superbike. I got a really good start and was a close 6th going through turn 1 and into 2. Ryan Sturz came flying by me in turn 2 on his FZR 400 and put me into 7th but I was still within spitting distance of the fast lead pack. I was really surprised I was able to stay so close all the way up to turn 9 but they all got through 9 a bit quicker than me and started to put the distance on me bit by bit. I knew someone was kinda close behind and pretty soon, Cory comes by me on the brakes going into turn 1. I was purposely not going so deep on the brakes but I was much faster through and out of turn 1 and passed him back almost every time. This went on for many laps in either turn 1 or 3 and then I got smart. If I was in front, I started my turn from closer to the middle of the track to really take away real estate on the inside. I then tried to gap him with my corner speed and I was able to pull a couple of second gap on him with a lap to go.
On the last lap I messed up turn 5 pretty good and lost my drive on the back straight and apparently he really closed the gap through turn 8 but I did pretty well through turn, dragging my knee and powered to the finish line through some oil dry powder on the left side of the track to try and throw up a smoke screen :) I took 7th out of 17 by 0.8 seconds over Cory and was super stoked. When I check the results, I saw I had a new personnel best of 1:34.8! I literally jumped up in the air when I saw that because it was way faster than I expected this weekend. I'm only 2-3 seconds off of an occasional podium and 3-5 seconds off the very fastest dudes (and girls!).
So I had a 5th, 8th, 1st, and 7th, a new personnel record to be proud of and a nice big trophy for the mantle. If they let me compete for the top rookie award, I should be in the lead with my 2 race wins. And I should be in the top 30 in club points so all in all it was a great weekend. One last note is my engine is weeping a bit of water out a gasket and needs a minor refresh to replace the base gaskets. Looks like I am going to give the bike to Zoran next week to redo the top end and also repair a leaky fork seal. As much as I like to work on vehicles, I just have too much going on to take a couple of weeks to work on it in my garage. Plus Zoran's the best with these SV650 engines so I think I actually trust him more than me on this one.....
Well, this has been a long race report, there was a lot to report so there ya go. Thanks to Gary for being my crew chief on Sunday and helping me out and thanks to my Dunlop tires for sticking real nice like and thanks to Eric (Clif Bar) for hooking me up with the Clif Blocks because they are really critical to give me the energy to get out there and race when I have the nauseous nervous feeling. And thanks for nothing to the Twin Works guys for putting me 3 positions lower racing the SV... :)