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So my goals for Round 2 were:
1 - Don't crash
2 - At least hit 26's, if not consistent 26's.
3 - Try, and finish, a GT race.
4 - Not let anyone beat me.
Almost all were accomplished.
Cliffs: Three wins.
Friday
Left work about 3 to run to Lowe's to pick up some last-minute hardware to mount my paddock stands to the trailer. Got the stands situated, loaded the car, and hit the road by 430ish. Tried the "91 to 9" route instead of the normal 90-495-295-93. Seems to take roughly the same time (if not a hair longer), I got better MPG, and no tolls...perfect for me Got to the track around 8, unloaded all my ish, and discovered we have no grill tools. Excellent, I brought burgers for dinner.
So Palmy and I make what ends up being a roughly hour-long freakin trip to Wal-Mart... Long story short, had some din-din and a couple drinks, put an R6 throttle tube on the SV, and called it a night. Oh, I also had Kurtz mount a set of rains I "stole" from him off NESR, onto the spare wheel set I've been piecing together over the past six weeks. The rear rim only arrived Wednesday; if only I really knew how fortuitous and timely that arrival was...
Saturday
Practice was uneventful. First few laps of Practice 1, I barely knew which direction the track went in...that soon got better though, and by the end of Practice 2 I was feeling good. My last three laps were all in the 28s, with a new PB of 1:28.662. I don't know if I can really count that though since it was in practice
Fast fwd to Race 9, NV LWGP. Now that Chuck has bumped to AM, I needed a new buddy to race against - enter our very own Big Sexy. I take the holeshot from 1A, and check the frig out. I felt gooood out there, everything was just flowing right. I saw a few places where I could've improved, but I felt like I was flying at least. I lapped a few people, probably only ULGP folks - I really don't remember. Won the race with a new official PB of 1:28.777, with rookie 122 Brady Ward actually having a faster best lap.
As we unwound after the races, it began to rain...
Sunday
"Rain drops keep fallin' on my head..." Or really, on the camper roof above my head...at least that's the sound I woke up to. No one was up and moving around even by 8am due to the rain (which went from light mist to decent normal rain for most of the day). Open practice... Around 830 I finally decide to suit up and get out there. I do not like the track in the rain since rain "caused" my last crash. But, I'd rather get the jitters out of my system during practice...
I decide to go out with my Pirelli Diablo Rosso Corsa's - they've got street tire sipes, and with the on again/off again rain, I don't want to burn up my rain tires if I don't have to. I manage two laps before I come back in to swap my rains on...for whatever reason, I had several slippage moments with the streets.
Get everything swapped over and head back out on the Pirelli rains...holy crap rain tires rock! Confidence in them increased with each lap - NO slippage whatsoever. I wanted to get really comfortable with the new tires, and riding in the rain in general, as I had a freakin 20 minute GTL as my first race. I was very pleased that, when I decided to go in, I'd been out there for a full 30 minutes pushing hard and still wasn't exhausted. Best practice lap was a 1:33.279...I was decently happy with that.
Race 3 - NV GTL
I'm much less nervous for this race now, as I feel confident I can last 20 minutes at the pace I need to to win this race. Also, unfortunately 201 Jake Vader had an apparently bike-disabling incident during practice. He had registered for LW (not ULW) GT...but with him DNS, my confidence is even higher. I'm gridded in 2A, and get past 826 Mark Parker pretty quickly...but my new buddy Brady is pulling away in 2nd, close on the rear wheel of 398 Bruce Marshall. Where the hell did these guys come from?! I had awesome starts (at least for a NV) last round... I put my head and right wrist down, and motor past Brady. If it wasn't raining, I probably could've snuck by Bruce on the brakes before tip-in - but my confidence isn't THAT high yet. So I maintain throttle rather than continue accelerating, begin to brake...and my rear tire breaks loose"ohshitohshitohshit... OK let's see what are we supposed to do now? oh yeah, that's right, nothing. Wait, is that my foot on the brake pedal?!? Crap! OK slooowly remove that...squeeeze the front brake... Well, there goes my tip in point, and I've got way too much going on to tip in at this speed in the wet... OK, fuck it, NASCAR time! Crap, that cone is right in my path." About this time I get a slight 'bump' on my rear tire. "Crap! Did someone just tap me? Oh CRAP - that sounds like a bike sliding across the pavement I really hope I didn't really cause that!
Oh crap, this cone is BIG and approaching fast...stop looking at it! Look away look away oh no did i cause someone to go down look away from the cone oh i feel awful well fuck it we're going over the cone." So I hit the 3' tall cone square on, but stayed up...as I went through NASCAR 1-2, I saw the red flag
So...we regrid, sans Brady... Green flag, Bruce takes the holeshot, but I'm right on his tail - he's slower in just about every corner so far. I passed him in T4, and again checked out. Chuck, Keith, Jay, Kurtz, and everyone else flagging for me on pit road signaled I had a huge lead every time I went by, so while that was great, I still motored on...and ended up lapping the entire grid twice. Another W, with a best lap of a 1:36.104. Still not sure how I ran 3 seconds slower than practice, but hey, a win is a win!
Race 9 - NV LWSB
It's POURING now. Cats, dogs, llamas, giraffes...all of them are coming down. Io-Bot ran Race 7 and provided some intel on where the trouble spots would be (pooling water, slippery, etc). I skip my normal warmup lap practice start...which proved a disservice, since Bruce Marshall once again took the holeshot even though I was gridded in 1A. No worries, as I pass him relatively quickly (I can't remember where, but sometime before T10) and head on my merry way. Again, I know he's slower through most turns after following him in the GTL, so I'm not horrendously worried about him catching up. One of the things Io mentioned was a veritable ocean at the transition of T10. What I failed to understand was it was the second transition - from NASCAR to road course, not the other way around. I had gotten the bike fairly upright over the 1st transition (at which time I noted that there didn't appear to be much water at all - wtf was Dave talking about?), then dropped it over and began rolling on the throttle to get pointed towards T11...hoooooly crap there's the river! As my front tire slide laterally about 4 feet.How the freakin thing didn't go down, I don't know. OK, checked my shorts, and continued on. Still POURING out. I do the T10 Shuffle twice more before I figure out where the river actually is. I had started to back off a hair around Lap 7...when some green leathers go flying by me before T3. WTF, where did you come from, I've never even seen you before! OK, head down, gotta catch him... That didn't happen, and he took the checkered about 10 yards in front of me...turns out it was 718 Drew Lawler, in the ULSB race!! Dude caught up to and passed the entire first wave, kudos to him. For me though, it meant a third win for the weekend, and a best lap of 1:39.601. Slower still than practice, but the weather was godawful for this race; and it was still a first place
Summary
So I met three of my four goals. I'm not sure why I only dropped a second from last weekend, except that I don't really have a "carrot," which is frustrating and satisfying at the same time. Still wanna get those yellow plates ASAP though... I had a TON of fun this weekend, thanks in no small part to the RSP Racing and ECK Racing boys, Palm Bomb himself, and the one and only Snowman Chuck Boucher, among others. Of course Tony's Track Days, EBC, and Pit Bull helped along the wayCan't wait for the Classic!
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Originally Posted by CBR929RE
It took me 4 or 5 laps to get comfy on the rains, but after that it was like being on dry pavement.
