Race Report for Week 2: May 19-20, 2001
The second race weekend of the 2001 season! Fantastic weather and a
great time had by all. Bruce once again kicked butt and came home
with two 3rd place finishes, and continues to get faster and faster on
both the MZ and the 748. Kevin started the season off on a high note, coming
home with a 3rd in Production Twins and a fifth in LW Sportsman!
And Paul is now back on pace, running laps on par with his fastest from
last season.
Find all of the weekends race results at the LRRS website here.
Another great weekend at the track! Brought home more wood
on the MuZ and dropped lap times on both bikes into the 1:22s. I
still need to drop a few seconds but at least I'm heading in the right
direction.
Made it to the track about 10:30p on Friday. Paul helped me
unload and I was sound asleep in my tent soon after. For the past
few years I've usually arrived early Saturday morning. Now that I'm
racing two bikes it takes longer to unload and because I'm running in both
the red and yellow practice I no longer have much extra time in the morning.
So I'll probably start showing up on Friday nights on a regular basis.
Saturday
Number plates were being checked in the tech garage and they wouldn't
give me a sticker for the Ducati until I put number plates on. I
was expecting this as the tail section on the Ducati is not a very flat
surface.
The first time into T1 in the first practice of the weekend on the Ducati I always find myself going wide before I remember that I need to put a little more effort into turning the 748. Practices were uneventful and I concentrated on picking up speed in T1 and T6. Something must have been working as I made it down to the 1:23 range on both bikes.
So far I've been running about the same times on both bikes, improving at roughly the same pace. I'm not quite sure what to make of this. Probably means that I'm riding more to my comfort level rather than the bikes' abilities. This is not necessarily a bad thing at this point.
After practice was over I bought some rain insurance in the form
of rain tires for my 748. It must have worked as we only felt a few
drops Saturday afternoon.
Race
9: LW Sportsman (MuZ) - 3/19 entries (11 pts, trophy)
Brian was on pole and I was gridded directly behind him.
As I lined up on the grid I aimed to his left to squeeze between him and
the cones. And it was a good thing too! The green flag flew
and Brian discovered he was in neutral! Oops. I went around
him and as I approached T1 Jack came around from the far left. He
must have gone through the cones to avoid Brian as he was gridded behind
me. Bart had the early lead followed by Dean on the YZ, Jack and
then me. I hounded Jack for a couple laps and finally got around
in T9 going in to T10. His front brake was fading and he wasn't able
to give chase nor did I receive a challenge from anyone else behind me.
By this time we were well into traffic from the first wave of LW Supersport
and I was unable to make significant progress cutting into Bart and Dean's
lead. Something must have happened with Bart's bike as Dean took
the win and Bart went out the T1a gate after the checkered.
Race
13: MW Supersport (Ducati) - DNS/27 entries (0 pts)
I'm sure I'll hear about this for the rest of the year :-) but
when the third call went out my bike wouldn't start. I waved to Paul
as he left for the grid and then got out of my leathers and went to watch
in T1a. Afterwards I tracked down Bruce and described the problem.
"That's an easy fix," he said and showed me a connector on a solenoid that
tends to loosen up. "You can usually just hit the fairing down here
a couple times." Aha! I'd just learned the secret Ducati whack!
Sure enough, I went back to the garage, gave the fairing a whack, and the
bike started right up.
Bruce and Susie stopped by bright and early Sunday morning so Bruce could double check my suspension. He'd taken a guess before I first picked up the bike and it turns out he'd set the sag correctly. I softened up the compression a little and put some zipties on the fork and shock tower to see how much I was using. That turned out to be pretty good too. After the first weekend I had bruises in the mid ribcage area from where the tank hits me when I'm hanging off and going over the transitions. Softening up the suspension helped a little this weekend but I still ended up with two sore spots. No biggie.
Sunday
Uneventful practice. I wasn't feeling particularly "aggressive"
and didn't push. Didn't even bother to check lap times.
Race
4: SuperTwins (Ducati) - 10/?? entries (3 pts)
I have a good grid position (2nd row, outside) and get a decent
start. I think I pass one or two bikes but I basically neither move
forward or backward in position. Toward the end the top juniors from
the HWSS wave start coming through. Turns out I turned all 22s and
23s and manage to avoid getting lapped by the likes of Chounaird who was
in the first wave of expert HWSS. I grab tenth and my first points
on the 748. Now I'm merely slow instead of really slow. :)
Race
9: SuperSingles (MuZ) - 3/7 entries (11 pts, trophy)
Talk about bad starts! I was dead last going into T1.
I took too long to get around Nick and then I saw the tail end of Galen's
crash in the bowl. That sent the ambulance out and that took some
of the fire out of my riding. It turns out Galen landed on his head
so he was OK. :-) (By the time I hopped on my bicycle and got over
to the med center after the race he was just on his way out under his own
power.) It took me another few laps to get around Brian and by then I wasn't
sure if I could make up the gap to Jack and Doug. Jeff had already
checked out but slowed and entertained the crowd toward the end of the
race. Jack was having brake problems again so he wasn't pulling away
from Doug. I knew if I could get right behind Doug coming out of
T12 I could outpower him to the line. White flag and I'm still about
a second back. Carry more speed through T6, inch closer through T9,
make sure to grab that downshift before T12, full throttle, get under the
paint... got him!
A good weekend. I dropped a bit over 2 seconds on the 748 and a bit under 2 seconds on the Skorpion. Good progress but I have to keep pushing those times down. The "warm-up" weekend is next followed by the Nationals. Until then I have several dirt track events to keep me going including the northeast amateur nationals!
What another fantastic weekend! We were greeted by near perfect weather all weekend long and things were just good all around. But, as usual, I didn't get my act together as early as I should have, so I didn't arrive at the track until Friday afternoon, too late to play with Penguin or to get any meaningful practice in, so I decided to just get the track, set up, and take my time, making sure everything was ready at a nice leisurely, sedate pace.
When I got to the tack, Kevin was already there and working on getting his new EX ready to go, so after making sure I was all situated with registration, tech, etc., I helped Kevin move his stuff into the TDR garage. We took a break for diner and headed down the road to the local Pizza joint, where we ran into the usual LRRS crowd (the tech guys, cornerworkers, etc.). After a nice, dinner, it was back to the track to make sure everything was set for the next day.
Around 10pm, Bruce finally showed up and unloaded, and I took off for my tent, wanting to get a good, solid nights sleep in before the racing of the next day.
Saturday
Woke up to a stellar day. Sun was out, birds were chirping
and life was good. Went about the usual morning activities, walking
the dog, showering, going over the bike one last time, etc., and then just
kicked back to wait for my first practice.
My practices went well, I was starting to find some of the speed from last year, getting into the lows 20's in my first practice, and some high 19's in my second. Still not on par with my best from last year, but much better than the 22's from last week!
After practice, I gathered up my stuff, and headed out to turn 1A to help out the incredibly short staffed cornerworkers. I planned on hanging out there until about race 8, then coming in to help the other riders get set for their races, and to give myself plenty of time to get ready for my race.
Race
13: MW Supersport - 16/27 entries (0 pts)
As third call is made both Bruce and I rip off the tire warmers
and head out. But Bruce's 748 won't start! I give him the "what
can I do to help" look, and he just waves me out. We grid up, I keep
looking for Bruce but he is nowhere to be seen. We do the warmup
lap, still no Bruce. Oh well.
I'm gridded on the 6th row on the inside. Crap. I need to start to pre register. I get a horrible start, and get squeezed going into turn 1. I don't know what position I was in in turn 1, but I know it wasn't good. Through turns 1a, 2 and 3, I was able to make my way though some of the traffic, and then we al started to spread out. As we spread out, I could see one bike ahead of me, the the #37 and #59 of Mike Martire and Peter Douvris. I was on a mission. I caught up to the #445 bike, and while I was faster than him, I could not get a clean pass on him. With about 3 laps to go, I finally got around him, and went to work on catching up with Mike an Peter. Each lap I took a second or two off their lead, but I just did not have enough laps to get them. When all was said and done, I came home in 16th, with a best lap tim of a 1:19.04, my best of the year!
With the racing complete, we all got cleaned up and headed out for some diner. After dinner, I helped Kit get her bike ready for racing the next day, by installing some frame sliders and doing some safety wire work, as well as dumping the coolant. I made it another early night, crawling into my tent around 10:30pm.
Sunday
I knew the cornerworkers were short staffed, so I got up early
enough to sign up to work a corner between practices. I got
turn 1A again, and made my way out there with my bike. Since I was
not running tire warmers (because the bike was in the corner with me),
I made an effort to be the first bike out, entering the track straight
from the turn. This would have been fine, had Jerry known that was
what I was going to do! Jerry was the first bike out in the first
practice. He passed me on the first lap out of turn 3, and gave me
the routine, or as much as he could from his bike, using hand gestures!
After practice, I tracked Jerry down to explain. He apologized, not knowing that I was a worker, he thought I was just some yahoo who entered the tract from the 1A gate. :)
I went out for my second practice and got a tow around with some of the faster riders. I was feeling good! And when I came in, my laps times showed I was running well as well! I pulled a 1:18.4! My fastest lap of the year, on DOT's no less. Too bad it wasn't during a race!
After practice, I packed up all my stuff, watched a few races, took some pictures and made sure everyone else was good to go. I had to leave early, as I was meeting friends from out of town for dinner, so I was on the road by 2:30pm.
Overall, a fantastic weekend. My times are back where they
should be, and I'm feeling great. I fully expect to be in the 17's
next weekend, and dare I say a 16? We'll soon find out!
Stay tuned!
Kevin's Report
Well if finally happened. The new season is upon us.
THE SHORT OF IT
As some of you may recall I ditched the old 16" EX for a newer
17" model with all the proper suspension goodies on it. I brought
it out during the fall round-up last year and discovered that though the
goodies were nice the bike was bent like a pretzel. Well the illustrious
Mr. Kates of GMD computrac (sponsor
plug :-) took care of all those issues and now she's right as rain.
You may also recall from old reports that sometime back in July of 99 I hit a personal best of 24.454 and that I'd not been able to come within a half-second of that since then. I could finsih okay and I could throw the bike away but I couldn't get below 24.99 or 25.01.
Well here it was the first day of the first weekend (for me) and I'd already hit a 24.444 and taken a fifth in LWSPMN. All of a hundreth of a second better than my previous best, and truth is I'm still not used to the bike and felt all over the track, but still a personal triumph for me to finally get back to moving forward.
Now if that wasn't good enough on Sunday I pulled a string of mid
24's in the Expert LWPT
race and managed to take a shade less than another 3/4's!! of a second
off that 24.444. Now my personal best is a 23.70 and I also took a third
in that race. Coulda been a second but Mr. Lai (hat's off to ya Matt)
was really on a tear this weekend and he managed several low 23's (inlcuding
best lap) and took the position from me. Nonetheless this was an
excellent weekend and I'm truly happy with the results. Especially
given the fact that I've not been on a track since Sept 2000 and not on
a straight bike on the track since Early August of last year. A major thanks
to all of TDR and our sponsors and to BJ Worsham and Matt Lai for putting
up with my *guff* and hauling me back and forth to the track. Well
I need to run now. I'll update this report with a long version next week.
Did not race this weekend. (Re-injured shoulder, flipping a mattress
no less!)
Did not race this weekend.
Did not race this weekend.