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Race Report: June 8-9, 2002

Find all of the weekends race results at the LRRS web site here.

(Written for Dane in his absence)

Priorities screwed up. Vactioning with woman instead of racing.

Well, this was the weekend that things finally came together for me this season. For starters, the weather was a million times better, with comfortable, dry weather, my bike ran well enough, and I was 90% recovered from my lowside in 6A in May. I stretched my roommate Joe to the limit making him photograph the evolution of the hematoma on my butt and leg over the 3 weeks it took to heal, and was sorely ;-) tempted to post some photos here. Alas, discretion won out over exhibitionism, but I'll email you a sample from the collection "All the Colors of Fall" if you e-mail me. Epilogue from last race weekend: I heard that my partner in the T3 tangle Steven Murphy was up at the track on Friday, feeling much better, and we spoke on the phone after the weekend, trading regards. He was understandably interested in what had happened as I was best-suited to describe. That and the video furnished by Murf's roommate Robin filled in the gaps for him. We had a chuckle-I apologized for falling in front of him taking him out and he apologized for 'using me for a speed bump'. No problem Steve, and really glad you're on the mend. See you on July 6, God willing.

Thursday - 06/06/2002
Drove up to the track and unpacked and setup. I discover the cause of the lowside on T3: My rear wheel got cocked in the swingarm, presumably from the lowside on Thursday, just enough to barely touch the swingarm. Tire 'grows' under speed and with heat, rubs swingarm more, heat builds up, tire gets 'cooked' in a 1-inch stripe on the sidewall. Shiny and hard, all done. Mystery solved. First I am bummed-this was all highly preventable if I had been more attentive. Then I am not bummed. There was a reason you fell down, you found it, you can fix it and go out and be confident. I settle on Plan B, confident. I remove the wheels, setup my gear, unhitch the trailer and go home.

Friday - 06/07/2002
I successfully conn Paul into humping my wheels over to Street and Comp for new rubber, allowing me to stay home and do Other Stuff. Thanks Paul.

Saturday - 06/08/2002
Drive up, put on the wheels, go over the bike thoroughly, carefully. Adjust some minor stuff, check pressures, coolant, gas, lube clutch cable, charge battery, check chain tension, discover missing clip on master link, replace. Get new gloves from S&C, and the usual good advice. Make second practice, feels fine, intentionally slow scrubbing in the new tires and regaining my confidence. Help Paul with his tires and setup, act as Gumby the Human Pitboard for Paul during race 1, GTU. Paul rips off a good race, says my mime stuff actually helped. OK, I'll do it again :-) Help out around the garage, fix GoPed #1 with Paul, fiddle with the new GoPed (#2), wobble around on it getting the hang of the thing. GoPeds rule and you should buy at least one. Hang out, admire Falvey's new camera, get our guest Jim out for his race, etc. It's all good.

Race 10A: Lightweight Sportsman - 7/12 entries (6 points)
Gridded second-to last with Murf, and that's fine. Joe Endris is dead ahead of me, although we haven't met at this point. He gives me and Murf the fish eye, we stare back, I'm determined to wax him now. 3, 2, 1-board, 1.5 seconds and Nick whips out the flag and whaddya know, I've been timing him and I nailed it-Presto! Pass 3 bikes before 1 including Endris. Murf passes me, though, and I latch on and follow him. Whipping down the chute to 3 and I've got some minor willies. Tip it in and gas it and it hooks up and I get only a fair drive up the hill, but I don't get passed. Good. Settle into the groove and I forget all about cooked stripes and speed bumps and the second wallet I'm still carrying under my skin. Next lap, I'm tip-toeing into T3 and Zip!, there goes Endris underneath. %^&*! I latch on to him now and follow him around. 2 laps later we're coming into the bowl, overtaking some slower Experts. Endris gets caught behind them on the inside line, I'm taking a higher line anyway and drive right past the three of them. Ha ha! Drive up the hill and over. 1 lap later he gets me back. This is war now. I show him wheels, can't get around. We catch up with Charles Baldwin on his motard, but I can't get by-he's gotta be 6'4" and all elbows and knees on that thing and I can hardly see past him much less get by him. Endris does, however and that's how we finish. Race over. I catch up with Endris finally in the pit and we laugh and point at each other and burn off the post-race 'babbles". It was a great battle and his first race in Junior I think. Hopefully he and Murf and I will do our Amateur 'Class of 2001' proud this season in Junior. I did a best-ever 1:28.5, and I feel like I can go faster. I figure I've got something for him tomorrow in Production Twins...

Saturday Afternoon:
Working on the bike a bit, I decide to quit messing around and swap out the rear spring for the right one. Peter Kates from sponsor GMD Computrack kindly agrees to install a new spring for me at the end of his 13 hour day, and does it with a smile and some good setup advice. He gets the preload within 5% of the ideal sag for me with the shock still in his vice by asking me my weight and figuring the appropriate tension on the spring. Nothing like knowing what you're doing. Scott lets me help him install and de-install my shock, Falvey puts on latex gloves and takes them off, does his Customs Inspector imitation. We button the bike back up and head out for dinner. Have I mentioned yet that being on this team rocks? So do our sponsors. Go home to sleep, Zzzzzzzzz.

Sunday - 06/09/2002
Get up, drive up, wake up (in that order), get dressed and go out for practice. The new spring feels great, I feel great, the weather is great. Inger and the girls are coming up later, I'm a teeny bit concerned about them watching me race, and the possibility of falling down, but whatever. I can't get distracted by it. Mike Martire comes by to help Paul with suspension setup. "Hey Mike, mind looking at mine?" He checks the damping on the rear shock, adjusts it a bunch to increase compression damping, checks the front end, pronounces it "not bad". Thank you Mike. I do the Gumby thing for Paul in his race again, prep my bike thoroughly, set it all up for 6A. My race is split again, which is really nice-lots of room and not too much passing from too many bikes on the track. Endris and Murphy (Brian) come over to sponge shade in the TDR garage before the race and we ride out to pregrid together. Ready to rock...

Race #6a: Production Twins - 4/8 entries (9 points)
Pole position once again. I'm still unaccustomed to the front row and I need to take advantage of it. 3,2,1-board, 1.5 seconds, launch. Whoa! What the heck just happened! Jeffrey Baldwin, Murf, and Joe Endris just went by me like they were shot out of a cannon. Baldwin in particular absolutely smoked the start. I'm struggling to get it going. Junior is teaching me that I'm not as good at the start as Amateur taught me to believe ;-). The race is fun, but relatively uneventful, till lap 6 when I started to experience a fuel-starvation problem: I'd drive hard into a turn, down shift, and roll back on and the bike would totally bog, no fuel getting through the carbs. Working the throttle from WFO to closed would eventually clear it, but my lap times leapt from 1:29 to 1:33, and I was lucky I had pulled a decent gap to 5th place by then. I did catch and pass a couple of the Experts in the race ahead of ours, but I couldn't catch any of my Junior competitors. I was (a bit too) mindful of my friends in T3, and tip-toed through there most of the race, although it didn't cost me positions to do so. I was happy to finish well, race pretty well, stay upright. Once again, all good.

Back in the pits, I go to the font of EX wisdom (North garages), and inquire of Chief Tech Inspector and EX-guru Bob Perkins. He queries me variously, and we trade theories about what could be wrong with my bike.

Perkins: "Are you running a fuel filter?

Me: "Yes, it was just installed over the winter".

Perkins: "Is it one of the small, triangular-shaped ones"?

Me:"Yes!"

Perkins: "Junk it! The same exact thing happened to me. I think it doesn't have enough capacity in it's reservoir for racing, and the carbs run dry when you shut off the throttle downshifting"

Street and Comp came through with the needed part yet again, and I tear the bike down to install it. By the time I finish and pack up it's 7 PM and I'm toast. We pack up the garage for the weekend, say our good-byes and all head home. It was a great weekend racing, and I feel like I made a big improvement over the last event, in effort, organization, and execution. I'm reconsidering whether or not I should be driving home on Saturday night on race weekends, as I'm still too rushed to make the early practice the way I'm doing it now. I'm pleased with the improvement in my lap times, although I have to drop at least a second per lap if I'm going to get on the podium this season. My cornering and body positioning is much better and smoother, and I'm touching hard parts less while going much faster than last year. I don't think I'm leaving much meat on the bone for my competitors with my braking, which was a goal of mine for the start of the season, so that's good. I need to work on getting off the line better and I need to continue to work on body position and fast corner-to-corner transitions like 1-1A and through T12. All in all I'm pretty happy, I'm making progress, and it's a blast. Thanks as usual to the team and our great sponsors. See you all on July 6.

Friday - 06/07/2002
Got up very early and made the trek up to NHIS to teach with the Penguin Roadracing School as usual. Having just gotten back from the UK on Wednesday, I was still a bit jet lagged, and has the startings of a cold to boot. Not a good start. :-/ Anyway, Friday was mostly uneventful, taking the time between helping the students, to work on my lines and more importantly, work on braking later, and getting on the gas earlier!

Saturday - 06/08/2002
For the first time this year, woke to a beautiful morning, sunny, warm, a few fluffy clouds in the sky. All right! Helped out in the gas truck for a bit between practices, to let Jack get out and practice as well. I felt good in practice, not great, but good.

Race #1: GTU - 11/24 enties (0 points)
Race time. For whatever reason, I have not clued into pre-registering, so I keep finding myself on the back of the grid. That, combined with my poor starts, mean I have my work cut out for me. :-) I got an ok start, heading into turn 1 on the outside, and made quite a few passed. Get a good drive into turn 1A and made a few more positions, but I let myself get pinched in turn 2, so I had to back off. As everyone sorted them selves out, I found myself behind a lot of the same people I find myself behind week after week. I managed to get by Dave S. (#85) pretty quickly. I could see Peter F. (#124) and Mike M. (#37) in the distance, and made it my goal to catch up to them. But for whatever reason, lap after lap they would pull a bit further away from me. I figured I would just relax, and race my race. Nil's was providing hand signals from pit lane to let me know how much space I had to the next bike behind me, with really helped a lot.

As the race progressed, I notice that I was catching up to Peter F. (#124) rather quickly. I soon found myself right on his tail and the question as to why was soon made very clear. Twice, right in front of me, Peter stepped out the rear end big time. Catching it both time, but it was obvious his rear tire was going. The second time, I pounced and made the pass and easily pulled away.

After feeling pretty good about the pass, and my racing, Scott Greenwood (#28) proceeded to put me in my place by lapping me with a few laps to go. He was the only one to do so, so I guess that's not too bad. :-/

Overall a good race. Never did really find my groove. I have 2 second out there somewhere, I just need to find them.

Sunday - 06/09/2002
Woke to an over cast, damp, drizzly morning. Ugh. What happened to the sun. Worked the gas truck again and watched the rain come down. I opted to skip first practice, but to make sure the sun would come out for the afternoon, i did get my rain mounted up. Sure enough, by the time second practice came around, the sun was out in full force. I went out for the practice, taking it very easy on the first lap, as the track was still damp in places, and I wanted to know where. Sure enough, turns 8-9 were still wet under the trees. After about 5 laps, the red flag came out, a bike had gone down in 8, where the track was still wet. I decided that was enough practice, and went in.

Race #2: MWGP - 12/17 entries (0 points)
Gridded near the back yet again. get an ok start, but once again get pinched off in turn 2. Got to work on that. Overall, and ok race, but once again, I was never able to find my groove, not really comfortable in turns 3-4. I know I can get through there a lot faster!

Spent the rest of the day cornerworking. Packed up and moved all my stuff to Jack's garage (North 12A) for the national and made my way home for a day of rest. Will be back at the track on Tuesday, and will be there through next Sunday! What fun!

Friday June 7
After confirming the bike was indeed RUNNING after installing the new stator (see May report), I packed up friday afternoon and headed for the track, arriving in time to sign in, register for 1 race, and tech. I really didn't have much to do, having done all the work at home.

Saturday June 8
1st practice - of the year. Great weather, bike ran fine, getting re-used to the cornering, shifting, timing of everything, didn't really care about lap times, I needed to feel a groove. By the fourth lap, I was turning it on for the straight but my braking was too soon, the tires weren't feeling secure. I had new ones planned for Sunday morning.
2nd practice, more of the same, faster corners, more lean, pushed once too much in T3 and felt the front start to slip away as I back off slightly to regain traction. OK, time for new tires. Street and Comp swapped them for me right away which was nice and had them back on the bike before lunch. I cornerworked for the afternoon.

Sunday - 06/09/2002
What's this ? rain ? RAIN? No rain was predicted. New Michelin Pilots don't work in the wet so BOTH morning practices were scrubbed for me. If it was a wet race, I wouldn't be running, and if dry, well, I've got fresh tires...

Race 9 SuperSingles - 7/12 entries (3 points)
The weather cleared up and the track dried for all the races. I cornerworked until Race 7 and came in to get ready. Two rows of bikes,2nd wave and I'm actually in a good starting location, 2nd row outside. Oooops - Red Flag for the 1st wave, guess we'll do the whole warmup lap again - cool, scrub those tires in! Second time, flag drops and we're off, but I didn't quite get the start I hoped for, so I was chasing them for the whole race. Since I was now racing myself, I concentrated on improving my lines, pushing my braking markers back, getting on the throttle sooner - all stuff I would've been doing in practice if had a dry practice. The good news was the new tires really improved the feel in the corners, so I gained a greater sense of trust in traction. The bad news was a breather hose let go on or about the last lap, which proceeded to mist the engine with oil fumes, making the whole thing a smoker! The corner workers wisely pulled me in to T3 just after the checker and Kit put an oil diaper under the motor to get me back to the garage, but it felt good run again.