Sunday- 4/27:
RAIN!
All practice groups are merged into a free for all. I follow chad out for a few laps. Scary stuff without rains. Fish tailing into T3 and down the hill into the bowl, not fun at all... Pit out after not too long and get bumbed out about the shotty conditions.
Get to watch Scott and Geno win their races and Geno break some records right after crashing. Still in shock how he can completely not let a crash in T3 phase him. My crash in T1a knocked me off of my feet badly. Gear up and CHECK GAS for race 7.
Race 7, PTwins:
I get a good launch, Alex comes blowing past me into T1... I need to get some damn breaks instead of banging down shifts to scrub off speed for every turn. I go to pass Alex on the inside of 3, show him a front tire and I see waving yellow so I roll off and let him enter first. I get him coming out of 4 on the next lap on the right side. We dice it back and forth till the last lap. Every time I lean the bike over and roll on the throttle after about the first lap I don't get any power and it just sputters til I stand it up.
In the back of my mind I figure I am running out of gas but I just don't do anything about it, not really thinking. On the last lap, going into T9 it gets real bad. I damn near stall out, drift out T10 far to the left and Alex slips by me. I yank the choke to keep it running, flip it to reserve (Derek always told us at VIR to race on the reserve so this didn't happen but I ran out of gas at VIR so many times that I started running it on "On" so I could flip it to make it into the pits. I run it on reserve every time since then.) I twist it wide open to get any juice left in it to start moving... It finally does and I bust the second and biggest wheelie in my life. The front tie was higher than my head. Corner workers in T3 must have thought I was drunk
... I pretty much take my time crossing the finish and pit in.