morbidelli17
Tue 6/17/08, 12:07AM
Show up at the track on what felt like two minutes of sleep, unload, hit the starter button and - nothing.
Great. Dead battery.
Pull out of the Saturday afternoon practice and charge the battery, do the practice starts - man, those are spooky. You don't know which way those new guys are gonna turn when they get to Turn One. But it's all good, we've got the bike running again, I've got a new rear wheel that I've painted to match the front, done a little cosmetic work on the beastie, and we're ready to do the 20-lap Solo race.
This is, I think, my third attempt to do the 20-lap Solo race; the first one I failed because my brake adjuster got mis-adjusted and the lever came back to the bar, causing a surface condition in my underwear; the second one because I was trying new tires, new gearing and new carbs all at once, and the bike was so spooky that it caused a surface condition - well, you get the idea.
I got the 500 off the line OK, which means that all the 650s went past me and I was last coming out of Turn One. OK, time to turn this BS around.
I went past the guy on the Ninja 650 early in Turn Two, then as we're exiting, one of my West Coast GP Cycles bruthas Pete Esquivel is going way wide - I mean dust and crap coming up from his tires as he's on the part of the pavement where bikes ain't supposed to go. His brother Alex checks up, and I shoot past.
Third. This is better.
On the next lap, I got around Pete in Turn Two, and I'm in second. Better than I'd expected, even though I think Palmer has lapped us already.
After that, I just tried to hit braking, turning and on-the-throttle marks consistently, and I was amazed at the lap times that kept coming up. The front tire had two days on it already, but it hung in there well, and the Dunlop guys insisted that I use the medium compound because of the heat, and it was perfect.
Lap after lap, the timer kept showing 1:33s. Amazing. Even when I had to slow to get around lapped traffic, I was never slower than 1:34s, and the minute I had clear track again, I was back down into the 1:33s.
On the 15th lap, more than 35 miles into this race, I clicked off a 1:33.1, my second fastest lap ever. All in all, 10 of the 20 laps were under the lap record I set for BOTT Light in February, including lap 19, and two of the 20 laps were the second- and third-fastest laps I've ever run at Willow Springs. I finished second, with Palmer so far ahead that he watched the last two laps from the stands, but a big gap back to Alex and Pete Esquivel. West Coast GP 1-2-3-4, baby!
What was so amazing was how easy it felt. There were few competitors, so I had mostly clear track, and once the adrenaline dies down a bit, it was calm, serene, smooth. I LOVE this endurance shit! And I even wasn't hurting when I got off the bike; although later ...
We went to the Golden Cantina with Pete and Alex for a fabulous dinner, and then ZenSandy and the girls in the garage "did" some cupcakes to celebrate ZenSandy's birthday. Then we blew up the air mattresses and crashed hard.
I overslept the next morning and missed the first practice session while I was getting tires flipped. The second session was a complete clusterfuck; while I enjoy rocketing past the Ninja 250s like I'm on Stoner's Desmosedici, I can't get in a clear lap.
Speed is, as JadeBlue once said, an elusive little minx. I was trying in BOTT Light, but the speed wasn't coming as easily. The front never did anything bad, but I think the Solo race was the last straw for that tire. And the rear was starting to slip a bit, especially in Turn Two (interestingly, Speights and I were running the same tire, and we both had the same thing happening). My best in the BOTT Light race was a 1:33.9, which was a bit of a let down, but it was good enough for the win.
As I usually do after I'm done racing, I went to the West Coast GP pits to thank them for helping create the best race bike I've ever owned. Andy paused for a minute as he was getting ready to go out and race, and he said, "Dude, I've never seen you ride as well as you did yesterday. You were just in the zone."
Sweet.
Thanks again to ZenSandy (Happy B-Day!), West Coast GP Cycles, Twin Works Factory and Dunlop.
Great. Dead battery.
Pull out of the Saturday afternoon practice and charge the battery, do the practice starts - man, those are spooky. You don't know which way those new guys are gonna turn when they get to Turn One. But it's all good, we've got the bike running again, I've got a new rear wheel that I've painted to match the front, done a little cosmetic work on the beastie, and we're ready to do the 20-lap Solo race.
This is, I think, my third attempt to do the 20-lap Solo race; the first one I failed because my brake adjuster got mis-adjusted and the lever came back to the bar, causing a surface condition in my underwear; the second one because I was trying new tires, new gearing and new carbs all at once, and the bike was so spooky that it caused a surface condition - well, you get the idea.
I got the 500 off the line OK, which means that all the 650s went past me and I was last coming out of Turn One. OK, time to turn this BS around.
I went past the guy on the Ninja 650 early in Turn Two, then as we're exiting, one of my West Coast GP Cycles bruthas Pete Esquivel is going way wide - I mean dust and crap coming up from his tires as he's on the part of the pavement where bikes ain't supposed to go. His brother Alex checks up, and I shoot past.
Third. This is better.
On the next lap, I got around Pete in Turn Two, and I'm in second. Better than I'd expected, even though I think Palmer has lapped us already.
After that, I just tried to hit braking, turning and on-the-throttle marks consistently, and I was amazed at the lap times that kept coming up. The front tire had two days on it already, but it hung in there well, and the Dunlop guys insisted that I use the medium compound because of the heat, and it was perfect.
Lap after lap, the timer kept showing 1:33s. Amazing. Even when I had to slow to get around lapped traffic, I was never slower than 1:34s, and the minute I had clear track again, I was back down into the 1:33s.
On the 15th lap, more than 35 miles into this race, I clicked off a 1:33.1, my second fastest lap ever. All in all, 10 of the 20 laps were under the lap record I set for BOTT Light in February, including lap 19, and two of the 20 laps were the second- and third-fastest laps I've ever run at Willow Springs. I finished second, with Palmer so far ahead that he watched the last two laps from the stands, but a big gap back to Alex and Pete Esquivel. West Coast GP 1-2-3-4, baby!
What was so amazing was how easy it felt. There were few competitors, so I had mostly clear track, and once the adrenaline dies down a bit, it was calm, serene, smooth. I LOVE this endurance shit! And I even wasn't hurting when I got off the bike; although later ...
We went to the Golden Cantina with Pete and Alex for a fabulous dinner, and then ZenSandy and the girls in the garage "did" some cupcakes to celebrate ZenSandy's birthday. Then we blew up the air mattresses and crashed hard.
I overslept the next morning and missed the first practice session while I was getting tires flipped. The second session was a complete clusterfuck; while I enjoy rocketing past the Ninja 250s like I'm on Stoner's Desmosedici, I can't get in a clear lap.
Speed is, as JadeBlue once said, an elusive little minx. I was trying in BOTT Light, but the speed wasn't coming as easily. The front never did anything bad, but I think the Solo race was the last straw for that tire. And the rear was starting to slip a bit, especially in Turn Two (interestingly, Speights and I were running the same tire, and we both had the same thing happening). My best in the BOTT Light race was a 1:33.9, which was a bit of a let down, but it was good enough for the win.
As I usually do after I'm done racing, I went to the West Coast GP pits to thank them for helping create the best race bike I've ever owned. Andy paused for a minute as he was getting ready to go out and race, and he said, "Dude, I've never seen you ride as well as you did yesterday. You were just in the zone."
Sweet.
Thanks again to ZenSandy (Happy B-Day!), West Coast GP Cycles, Twin Works Factory and Dunlop.