Kurt'sSV
Tue 5/25/04, 9:02AM
Willow Springs Motorcycle Club, Round 5, May 16, 2004
It was nice not to have the air freezing cold when we arrived at Willow Springs early Sunday morning. Going out for the two early practice sessions was never any fun when the track was cold and your tires would not stick for the first half of the session. I did not do Saturday practice this month. Even though I had a new clutch, new pegs, and new boots to get used to, just the two morning practice sessions on race day were going to be my only time on the bike before the race. The only goal I wanted to achieve this month was taking turn eight at one hundred percent. I was pretty close last month, so I knew it would not take me much to get that little extra speed around the big sweeper.
When I went out for the first practice session I decided that I would be aggressive right away. I stayed wide going around turn two passing people and slid past another person going into turn three. I needed to ride these two sessions hard to get in the right mind set for the race in the afternoon. After a couple of laps I noticed that I must be going at a pretty good clip because my knee kept meeting the ground sooner and easier than I was expecting. The bike seemed to be tipping easier into turns. Part of it was that I was consciously “rowing” the handlebars and the other part was the new, rigid pegs. It is hard to imagine that something as simple as pegs that do not fold up can make a big improvement in a bike’s handling. Because there is no give or movement with the peg, you are able to steer the bike much more with your feet. The one draw back to the new pegs was that they, and the soles of the brand new boots, were very grippy. I had a little trouble sliding my foot forward to toe the shift lever up to put the bike in lower gears. Because the grippyness kept me from down shifting quickly, I almost ran off into the dirt in turn three. After the practice sessions I took a file to my left foot peg to cut down on its grip.
At one point during the first session a guy creeped by me on my inside as we went into turn eight. He wasn’t really going much faster than me so I decided to try to hang with him through the turn. I pulled the throttle back a little more to keep his pace and there it was; the stop. I was now going through turn eight at one hundred percent full throttle! It was pretty easy to go that pace around the turn and my confidence to be able to hang with the fastest riders in my race soared.
After a long day of hanging out in the sun and wind, they finally called my race to pregrid; the last race of the day. By this time the wind had picked up to a gale and my confidence to pilot the bike in these conditions waned. I was grided on the front row in the fourth position and knew that I had to take advantage of this and get a good start. When the starter put up the one minute board I revved the engine like I always do, kicked the bike up into first, sat back on the seat and leaned over the tank. When the green flag dropped I gunned the bike like always and began feeding the clutch out. What I learned real quick was that new clutch plates grab much better than worn out ones. My front end started to come up and as I let out the clutch more, the front came up more. In about a second I was doing the biggest God damned wheelie of my life, but I wasn’t even moving. The bike just seemed to rotate, backward, over the rear axle. I chopped the throttle to let the front end come down and when it did I took off for turn one. At this point, though, my great start was destroyed and I entered turn one back near twentieth place.
I knew I had to make up a lot of time and began with turn two. I stayed wide and swung around a couple of people in that turn and charged three wondering if I could make up another spot under braking. I was able to slide past one rider, but splitting us and passing the rider in front of me, was the 551 bike. This was the same guy that I worked so hard last month to chase down, only to have him out motor me to the finish. I know knew my first mission was to get past him as soon as I saw an opening so he could not hold me up. I leaned it into turn three ready to chase this guy down immediately and put him behind me. What I saw when I looked up the hill changed everything. One bike was being ridden off into the dirt, two more were sliding across the track on their sides and one rider was getting run over by another bike which then fell over. I knew that would bring out the red flag, which I would benefit from, greatly. As I came around to turn four B the corner worker threw up the red flag and we all began rolling to a stop. This still did not deter some other guy from crashing and rolling off into the dirt. I don’t know what he did to cause himself to go down, but he sure must have felt stupid. Once the ambulance and crash trucks got rolling we were signaled to pit in and be ready for a long wait on the restart.
Crashes, and even bad crashes, are a part of racing. You have to accept it if you are going to have any career in the sport. The mindset of “well, some people went down so I’m going to sit this one out” to me is ludicrous. If you are not willing to race hard and take risks, then why are you out here in the first place? Another theory that makes me wonder why a person would even want to bother coming out to the track is that they do not want to try racing the other people in the novice race because their bike is not competitive. Not trying because your bike is not competitive is a real cop-out in my mind. Instead, they just plan on cruising around until they can graduate to the expert class races where their bike is competitive. What I don’t get is once they move up to race 550SB against the other SV’s, do they suddenly think they will be racing with the front runners? To win 550SB against the other SV’s you have to ride even faster than you would to win the middleweight novice race against the 600s. When you first move up to race 550SB, yes your bike is competitive, but you are not. You still need to practice racing other people and getting used to pushing yourself to the edge of your limits while in novice so you do not get embarrassed when you move up to 550SB and race the experts. If you don’t want to race, why even show up? Go hard, or go home.
After the long clean-up process we were finally called back to pregrid for our four lap restart. I was one of the last ones to show up so I was in the back of the group on the warm-up lap. It seemed that the wind had picked up even more during the break and my bike slid all the way around turn one because the wind was pushing it so hard. Coming down the front straight to my grid position I felt pretty cool passing everyone to get up to my spot on the front row. Like I was some big shot factory rider making everyone wait for me to come strolling up to the front.
To avoid another 12 o’clock wheelie on the starting line I decided to sit on the front of my seat to keep more weight forward. I don’t know why I was not doing this in the first place. It’s not like the SV has enough power to spin the rear wheel. I revved the motor like before, but when the green flag was waved I was a little more careful on feeding the clutch out. It was not my strongest launch ever, but it was better than everyone else’s on the front row and I lead everyone off the line. I think I was in first place for about three seconds before the rest of the first two rows got their bikes wound up. Before we hit turn one I was relegated back to about eighth or ninth, but at least I could see the rider in first place.
With the wind pushing so hard it was difficult to get the bike to turn into it for the first corner. I wanted to go lower in the turn, but the wind just wouldn’t allow and it almost pushed me into a guy on my outside. Like the first start I stayed wide entering turn two, went around a rider on the outside and ran up a black 600RR’s butt at the exit. Entering turn three I slid past this guy and led him up to turn four. On the exit of four B he came up on my inside and I had to let him through. Crap, I thought, I really need to work on my speed exiting four. The black, 600RR steadily pulled away on the exit of five so I knew I would not be getting him back.
When I went through the dog leg that is turn seven, tucked up behind my wind screen, I saw a GSX-R 600 come by on my left. This was to be expected, but I wasn’t just going to let this guy go! I wanted to see how hard he took turn eight first. I knew that he would come across in front of me from my left to my right and when he did I eased off the throttle just a little bit to be sure not to hit his rear tire. Once he moved to my right and we started the turn, I grabbed a handful of throttle, put my knee on the pavement and blew buy the guy. I could now charge turn nine with a clear line of sight. I expected this guy to blow by me on the front straight, but he never did. I must have put quite a bit of ground on him in the eight/nine section. I did not see him again until the back straight. He passed me in turn seven. But, I didn’t let him go. When we tipped into eight; I put the puck to the pavement and shot by him again.
He must have hung with me a little better around eight and nine because he caught me around the start/finish line. When he was coming by on my left he was real, real close to me. Before he got completely in front of me he started moving over! I knew he was going to clip my front tire and sure enough he did. When his rear tire hit my front tire, Dustin Coyner, who was watching from the bleachers with Shandra and Will, said he saw smoke come off my tire. The front end of the bike shook violently, but I got it straightened out and avoided kissing the ground at 130mph. The head shake came and went so quickly that I didn’t have time for it to scare me. Instead it just pissed me off. I wanted to honk my horn at the guy, but I figured if an official heard me doing that I might get in trouble, so I didn’t. This really slowed me down and threw off my rhythm. The guy put some distance on me and I was never able to make it up. I did try, but even though I could match his corner speed, and in many places exceed it, I could not get anywhere near his straight line speed.
Another area that I need a lot of improvement is entering turn one. I slow down way too much before that turn. I can not get myself to approach it harder because of the speed I am going at the end of the front straight. I need to learn how to use my brakes better. I got passed going into turn one by Melissa on her 600RR on lap four, our last lap. I worked hard through turn one and the short chute before turn two to keep her from getting away. We came up on the back of the GSX-R 600 that clipped my front end by the exit of turn two. I had no idea how I was going to get by both of them unless I was able to go around them in turn eight, so I needed to try to hang with them as best I could to be close enough to make the pass.
I made a mistake by turning the bike in too early going into three. This caused me to run wide on the exit and prevented me from getting on the gas until real late. I did my best to make up for the mistake and took four B hard. A little ways past the apex my bike started bouncing off the rev limiter. There wasn’t really time for me to shift up into fourth because I would need to shift right back down to third again for turn five, so I just left the bike bouncing off the rev limiter for another second until I started braking for five. Coming out of five I thought I was looking good with the distance I was behind the two other bikes. But, once we opened it up to start going over six, the distance grew quite a bit. Because of the wind I had to turn the bike very hard going over six to get it where I needed it to go. My knee had been scraping the top of six all race long, but this time my toe slider hit down too. When we finally made it to turn eight I kept the throttle pulled all the way back to the stop and kept my knee up to cut down the wind resistance as I was hanging off. I was making up lots of ground on the other two bikes, but I had such a long way to go to catch them that it was looking pretty futile. I was getting within striking distance of Melissa in turn nine but by this time knew that I could not get in front of her and keep her from repassing me before the finish line. Rolling right up on her tail; or even being right beside her on the exit would not do me any good either. I didn’t exactly give up, because I continued to make up ground in the turn. But, I did not try to make some miraculous pass that could cause me to crash. I knew there was no way I would be able to finish ahead of her, now. Once we hit the straight, the usual happened.
I finished a respectable, yet disappointing eleventh. With the two points I earned finishing eleventh, I was still two shy of the ten total points I need to graduate out of the novice class. I would have been even more frustrated had I finished tenth because with the three points awarded for that position I would be one point shy and would still need to do another novice race. On the cool down lap I went around Melissa and pulled up to next to the guy who clipped me. I wanted to give him the finger, but knew that was not very sportsman like and just shook my head in disgust when the guy waved to me.
I was proud of the fact that I finished well, took another second off from my personal lap record and accomplished my goal of taking turn eight at full throttle. At the same time I was frustrated that I had to spend another month in novice. I really want to do an endurance race (and have to have an expert license to be allowed to do one) and felt cheated by the dirty pass. But at least I get another month to practice before I move up to race with the fast people.
Thanks to my sponsors: Jadeblue Creative, Tustin Martial Arts, Galfer and SoCalSVRiders. I also appreciate Will and Shandra helping me out in the pits.
It was nice not to have the air freezing cold when we arrived at Willow Springs early Sunday morning. Going out for the two early practice sessions was never any fun when the track was cold and your tires would not stick for the first half of the session. I did not do Saturday practice this month. Even though I had a new clutch, new pegs, and new boots to get used to, just the two morning practice sessions on race day were going to be my only time on the bike before the race. The only goal I wanted to achieve this month was taking turn eight at one hundred percent. I was pretty close last month, so I knew it would not take me much to get that little extra speed around the big sweeper.
When I went out for the first practice session I decided that I would be aggressive right away. I stayed wide going around turn two passing people and slid past another person going into turn three. I needed to ride these two sessions hard to get in the right mind set for the race in the afternoon. After a couple of laps I noticed that I must be going at a pretty good clip because my knee kept meeting the ground sooner and easier than I was expecting. The bike seemed to be tipping easier into turns. Part of it was that I was consciously “rowing” the handlebars and the other part was the new, rigid pegs. It is hard to imagine that something as simple as pegs that do not fold up can make a big improvement in a bike’s handling. Because there is no give or movement with the peg, you are able to steer the bike much more with your feet. The one draw back to the new pegs was that they, and the soles of the brand new boots, were very grippy. I had a little trouble sliding my foot forward to toe the shift lever up to put the bike in lower gears. Because the grippyness kept me from down shifting quickly, I almost ran off into the dirt in turn three. After the practice sessions I took a file to my left foot peg to cut down on its grip.
At one point during the first session a guy creeped by me on my inside as we went into turn eight. He wasn’t really going much faster than me so I decided to try to hang with him through the turn. I pulled the throttle back a little more to keep his pace and there it was; the stop. I was now going through turn eight at one hundred percent full throttle! It was pretty easy to go that pace around the turn and my confidence to be able to hang with the fastest riders in my race soared.
After a long day of hanging out in the sun and wind, they finally called my race to pregrid; the last race of the day. By this time the wind had picked up to a gale and my confidence to pilot the bike in these conditions waned. I was grided on the front row in the fourth position and knew that I had to take advantage of this and get a good start. When the starter put up the one minute board I revved the engine like I always do, kicked the bike up into first, sat back on the seat and leaned over the tank. When the green flag dropped I gunned the bike like always and began feeding the clutch out. What I learned real quick was that new clutch plates grab much better than worn out ones. My front end started to come up and as I let out the clutch more, the front came up more. In about a second I was doing the biggest God damned wheelie of my life, but I wasn’t even moving. The bike just seemed to rotate, backward, over the rear axle. I chopped the throttle to let the front end come down and when it did I took off for turn one. At this point, though, my great start was destroyed and I entered turn one back near twentieth place.
I knew I had to make up a lot of time and began with turn two. I stayed wide and swung around a couple of people in that turn and charged three wondering if I could make up another spot under braking. I was able to slide past one rider, but splitting us and passing the rider in front of me, was the 551 bike. This was the same guy that I worked so hard last month to chase down, only to have him out motor me to the finish. I know knew my first mission was to get past him as soon as I saw an opening so he could not hold me up. I leaned it into turn three ready to chase this guy down immediately and put him behind me. What I saw when I looked up the hill changed everything. One bike was being ridden off into the dirt, two more were sliding across the track on their sides and one rider was getting run over by another bike which then fell over. I knew that would bring out the red flag, which I would benefit from, greatly. As I came around to turn four B the corner worker threw up the red flag and we all began rolling to a stop. This still did not deter some other guy from crashing and rolling off into the dirt. I don’t know what he did to cause himself to go down, but he sure must have felt stupid. Once the ambulance and crash trucks got rolling we were signaled to pit in and be ready for a long wait on the restart.
Crashes, and even bad crashes, are a part of racing. You have to accept it if you are going to have any career in the sport. The mindset of “well, some people went down so I’m going to sit this one out” to me is ludicrous. If you are not willing to race hard and take risks, then why are you out here in the first place? Another theory that makes me wonder why a person would even want to bother coming out to the track is that they do not want to try racing the other people in the novice race because their bike is not competitive. Not trying because your bike is not competitive is a real cop-out in my mind. Instead, they just plan on cruising around until they can graduate to the expert class races where their bike is competitive. What I don’t get is once they move up to race 550SB against the other SV’s, do they suddenly think they will be racing with the front runners? To win 550SB against the other SV’s you have to ride even faster than you would to win the middleweight novice race against the 600s. When you first move up to race 550SB, yes your bike is competitive, but you are not. You still need to practice racing other people and getting used to pushing yourself to the edge of your limits while in novice so you do not get embarrassed when you move up to 550SB and race the experts. If you don’t want to race, why even show up? Go hard, or go home.
After the long clean-up process we were finally called back to pregrid for our four lap restart. I was one of the last ones to show up so I was in the back of the group on the warm-up lap. It seemed that the wind had picked up even more during the break and my bike slid all the way around turn one because the wind was pushing it so hard. Coming down the front straight to my grid position I felt pretty cool passing everyone to get up to my spot on the front row. Like I was some big shot factory rider making everyone wait for me to come strolling up to the front.
To avoid another 12 o’clock wheelie on the starting line I decided to sit on the front of my seat to keep more weight forward. I don’t know why I was not doing this in the first place. It’s not like the SV has enough power to spin the rear wheel. I revved the motor like before, but when the green flag was waved I was a little more careful on feeding the clutch out. It was not my strongest launch ever, but it was better than everyone else’s on the front row and I lead everyone off the line. I think I was in first place for about three seconds before the rest of the first two rows got their bikes wound up. Before we hit turn one I was relegated back to about eighth or ninth, but at least I could see the rider in first place.
With the wind pushing so hard it was difficult to get the bike to turn into it for the first corner. I wanted to go lower in the turn, but the wind just wouldn’t allow and it almost pushed me into a guy on my outside. Like the first start I stayed wide entering turn two, went around a rider on the outside and ran up a black 600RR’s butt at the exit. Entering turn three I slid past this guy and led him up to turn four. On the exit of four B he came up on my inside and I had to let him through. Crap, I thought, I really need to work on my speed exiting four. The black, 600RR steadily pulled away on the exit of five so I knew I would not be getting him back.
When I went through the dog leg that is turn seven, tucked up behind my wind screen, I saw a GSX-R 600 come by on my left. This was to be expected, but I wasn’t just going to let this guy go! I wanted to see how hard he took turn eight first. I knew that he would come across in front of me from my left to my right and when he did I eased off the throttle just a little bit to be sure not to hit his rear tire. Once he moved to my right and we started the turn, I grabbed a handful of throttle, put my knee on the pavement and blew buy the guy. I could now charge turn nine with a clear line of sight. I expected this guy to blow by me on the front straight, but he never did. I must have put quite a bit of ground on him in the eight/nine section. I did not see him again until the back straight. He passed me in turn seven. But, I didn’t let him go. When we tipped into eight; I put the puck to the pavement and shot by him again.
He must have hung with me a little better around eight and nine because he caught me around the start/finish line. When he was coming by on my left he was real, real close to me. Before he got completely in front of me he started moving over! I knew he was going to clip my front tire and sure enough he did. When his rear tire hit my front tire, Dustin Coyner, who was watching from the bleachers with Shandra and Will, said he saw smoke come off my tire. The front end of the bike shook violently, but I got it straightened out and avoided kissing the ground at 130mph. The head shake came and went so quickly that I didn’t have time for it to scare me. Instead it just pissed me off. I wanted to honk my horn at the guy, but I figured if an official heard me doing that I might get in trouble, so I didn’t. This really slowed me down and threw off my rhythm. The guy put some distance on me and I was never able to make it up. I did try, but even though I could match his corner speed, and in many places exceed it, I could not get anywhere near his straight line speed.
Another area that I need a lot of improvement is entering turn one. I slow down way too much before that turn. I can not get myself to approach it harder because of the speed I am going at the end of the front straight. I need to learn how to use my brakes better. I got passed going into turn one by Melissa on her 600RR on lap four, our last lap. I worked hard through turn one and the short chute before turn two to keep her from getting away. We came up on the back of the GSX-R 600 that clipped my front end by the exit of turn two. I had no idea how I was going to get by both of them unless I was able to go around them in turn eight, so I needed to try to hang with them as best I could to be close enough to make the pass.
I made a mistake by turning the bike in too early going into three. This caused me to run wide on the exit and prevented me from getting on the gas until real late. I did my best to make up for the mistake and took four B hard. A little ways past the apex my bike started bouncing off the rev limiter. There wasn’t really time for me to shift up into fourth because I would need to shift right back down to third again for turn five, so I just left the bike bouncing off the rev limiter for another second until I started braking for five. Coming out of five I thought I was looking good with the distance I was behind the two other bikes. But, once we opened it up to start going over six, the distance grew quite a bit. Because of the wind I had to turn the bike very hard going over six to get it where I needed it to go. My knee had been scraping the top of six all race long, but this time my toe slider hit down too. When we finally made it to turn eight I kept the throttle pulled all the way back to the stop and kept my knee up to cut down the wind resistance as I was hanging off. I was making up lots of ground on the other two bikes, but I had such a long way to go to catch them that it was looking pretty futile. I was getting within striking distance of Melissa in turn nine but by this time knew that I could not get in front of her and keep her from repassing me before the finish line. Rolling right up on her tail; or even being right beside her on the exit would not do me any good either. I didn’t exactly give up, because I continued to make up ground in the turn. But, I did not try to make some miraculous pass that could cause me to crash. I knew there was no way I would be able to finish ahead of her, now. Once we hit the straight, the usual happened.
I finished a respectable, yet disappointing eleventh. With the two points I earned finishing eleventh, I was still two shy of the ten total points I need to graduate out of the novice class. I would have been even more frustrated had I finished tenth because with the three points awarded for that position I would be one point shy and would still need to do another novice race. On the cool down lap I went around Melissa and pulled up to next to the guy who clipped me. I wanted to give him the finger, but knew that was not very sportsman like and just shook my head in disgust when the guy waved to me.
I was proud of the fact that I finished well, took another second off from my personal lap record and accomplished my goal of taking turn eight at full throttle. At the same time I was frustrated that I had to spend another month in novice. I really want to do an endurance race (and have to have an expert license to be allowed to do one) and felt cheated by the dirty pass. But at least I get another month to practice before I move up to race with the fast people.
Thanks to my sponsors: Jadeblue Creative, Tustin Martial Arts, Galfer and SoCalSVRiders. I also appreciate Will and Shandra helping me out in the pits.