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To say this weekend was exciting for me was an understatement.
Got up to the track on Fri night at midnight and got about 2 hours of sleep because the heater in my trailer stopped working. It was cold and uncomfortable to say the least.
Got the new bike all ready to go in the morning and got teched. Had to put new Pirellis on, so I missed first practice technically, but made up for it when they opened practice up to everyone. Initial impression of the bike was that it had a throttle more sensitive than sweeney when he gets locked in a trailer and....this thing actually goes fast! First practice was a hot (cold) mess. Turn 3 was a train wreck as I was as smooth and predictable as Jackie Chan. By the end of second practice I was developing a loss of traction on the front when under heavy braking in T1 and T3. This crazy fast guy told me to drop my forks down in the triples to make the bike hold a line better and for overall safety haha. To solve the braking issue I softened the compression 2 flats before the first race.
My first race was GTU on Saturday. I was gridded up in back with some former competition in the form of Trevor Arvidson. My goal was to keep it on 2 wheels, but I also wanted to keep up with him. I got a great start in the race and went into T1 in 5th I think. The race was shortened so this normally 12 lapper was 8 laps, so time was short. People started passing me and Trevor disappeared from my sight in a few laps. I started off running 1:30's in the race and by the end I had reached a 01:27.273 which was then the PB for that bike.
Second race I swapped my rear tire for a new one and headed out for MWGP otherwise known as "the dash". I was nervous as all hell before I got on the bike as I knew what this race was to the series and how many people would be watching. All it took was getting on the bike and starting it up before my mind was cleared from all that. It's funny how just getting on a bike completely clears my head and primes me for what I need to do during the race. I tried to get a decent start but they don't call it the meat grinder for nothing... I was gridded on the inside and by the time I got to T1 the inside of the corner looked something like the tornado in the wizard of oz. I fell in behind pigman after he shut the door and got by him on lap 4 when h is clipon rotated on him haha. When people came up to me afterwards and told me that I beat Sean I didn't believe them until I looked at the results and talked to him. Pretty impressive to run those times with the bike like that. I finished the dash in 17th out of 19 with a 01:25.779. Dropped a second and a half...not too shabby.
Race one on Sunday was MWSB. Again I managed a decent start and then got passed back when actual riding needed to take place haha. Brian Killmeier was in front of me again, but this time he was holding me up big time in 1-2 and 6-12. After a few laps of feeling him out I finally stuck the pass on him in T1 on the brakes and made it stick. I was really starting to get the hang of the bike by now and was starting to have a lot of fun. We had changed the throttle from a 1/8 turn to a 1/6 turn about the day before, so it was much better in terms of response. It worked extremely well and I rode smooth and kept it on 2 wheels the rest of the race.
The last race of the day MWSS was...uhh...interesting. For this race I had turned on the lap timer that I bought from Lou at http://madmonkeyspeed.com/LT-Q6000.html which worked awesome. I never looked down, but the data on it is worth it's weight in gold. When I gridded up on the front straight I realized that I couldn't see the flagger. I tried to look around the other person, but couldn't really see. I thought I saw green so I launched....only for everyone else to just sit there. Crap! I stopped pretty quick after I realized it, and then everyone took off...OF COURSE! I managed to get a semi-decent start anyways and passed Brian Killmeier again. This time I got it out of the way earlier in the race. Pigman lost the pack off the start and was leading me around most of the race....which was great thanks!!! I managed a 01:23.438 while keeping up with him.
But overall it was a great first weekend with steady improvement in lap times every race. Thank you to all my sponsors listed in my sig and also HUGE thanks to all of the corner workers for braving the weather for us!!
And thanks to Arcy at On track media for this shot...
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Originally Posted by csmutty
Smutty, we're gonna start callin you Fabio pretty soon! 
