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Cliff's Notes: Racing is fun even when you aren't on point because of the people. 8 days is a long time to spend at the track.
Pre-racing: I arrived late Tuesday night to be ready for Pirelli customers on Wed/Thurs for practices. Tony and Graham were on site before me, and had saved me my usual space along the fence line in our "neghborhood." Actually Johnny B had coned off the entire neighborhood earlier in the week for us. Thanks Johnny B! Sav (508) arrived Wednesday, and we had some work to do to put his Hawk back together after having lots of suspension work done, so Tony and I helped out with that, also Brian (90) when he arrived. Thursday I did some maintenance to my SV, and hung in the garages. After Sav paid for practice, it began raining, but Tony and I convinced him to go out anyway after we put my rains on his bike. He did not take to rain riding very well.Later on, Mike W (43) arrived, and we got to work putting his SV together for the endurance race on Friday, which we hoped to use it for to be competitive in the LWSB class. All went together, it was a late night(a common theme for this weekend), and it was off to bed to relax before the first day of racing.
Friday - Endurance Race: Myself, Mike Weyant, Chuck Boucher (39), and Sav
formed a team to ride Mike's SV Superbike in the LWSB class for the first(in recent years) LRRS Endurance race. This race was an absolute blast, possibly the most fun racing I've had yet. We talked quite a bit about how to handle this race, and we managed to form up an amazing pit crew(which will come in handy shortly...) of Eric Reiter (RSP Pit Boss), Heath Smith (LRRS long standing regular with lots of experience in these types of races), Josh Coombs (771, a bit of a mad scientist who could come in very handy if/when things go wrong), Brian Kelly (90, RSP teammate, strong like bull) and Mike Randi (272, total racing NOOB yet surprisingly cool and collected when he's holding a large can of explosive dead dinosaur juice with a trigger happy fire extinguisher man eying him).
We decided to each run a 30 minute stint off the bat, to meet the minimum per rider requirement, and then handle the remaining time as we felt best. The order was to be Mike Weyant(fastest, and on his own machine) going out first to establish a good lead, then Sav(our AM rider, least experienced, and only having a few minutes on an SV, we expected he would be the slowest), followed by me(and my "solid mid pack" reputation), and finishing up the order with Chuck(as our second fastest rider, on a similarly equipped SV Superbike he was a natural choice to balance out the last of the initial 2 hours).
Mike found himself out to an early lead, being a fast guy on a good bike running against some other fast guys on less good bikes, but a misstep in the 4th lap had him bringing the bike in for some repairs. Our crew got the bike back up and running after replacing a rearset and clutch lever in am amazingly short time(we lost less than 15 minutes overall; BEST crew in the pits) and Mike headed back out. When his first stint was over, Sav went out...and surprised everyone by getting down into the 24's and setting a new personal best, all on a motorcycle he didn't own and had barely ridden. Knowing that he had gone out and set the bar high, I figured I had to make sure I beat that time. A little trip over my own two feet while running my toolbox out to pit lane had doubled the size of my right ankle, but a handful of Aleve made it all better, so I went out and managed mostly 24's, with a couple laps into the 23's, just enough to make sure I saved face. Two laps before I came in, it began to drizzle, so I was happy to be handing off the controls to Chuck, but he got the short end of it. He fared well, kept the bike circulating on slicks in the slight wet, saving us a tire change of down time, and still doing enough laps to keep us in the race. As it dried, he drilled his times down a bit but certainly fatigued, leaving me with the credit of "second fastest" after Mike on our team for that race.
Saturday - Lightweight Grand Prix: Nothing too exciting, finished 17 of 24 starters, really couldn't find a groove and couldn't find my way past some competitors I was in front of last weekend. Best lap of 22.5, so two full seconds off Round 2. Saturday evening I stayed up wayyyy too late hanging out first at the RSP garage and then down at T1A. Slept like a champ thanks to Kim P letting me crash on her gigantic super aerobed in exchange for letting her crash in my trailer, but a few hours isn't enough rest for racing; I need to start pulling myself away and going to bed earlier.
Sunday - Lightweight Supersport: Another mediocre race from a laptime perspective, best lap of 22.3 and a 9th of 15 starters placement. I did have a fun race long battle with Adam Butler (820) and apparently I "held off" a few others(code for went slow enough to slow them down, but just fast enough to keep them from picking me off while battling each other). Fun times talking about racing in the garage with Adam, hopefully I can find some of the funk he found and battle him again in Round 4.
Lightweight Superbike: "worst" race of the weekend, best lap of 24.0 and just narrowly missing out on last place, taking 17tyh of 18 starters. In retrospect, I should have done one race per day this weekend, or just gotten more sleep. Food for thought next time.
Followed it up with three days with Tony's Track Days, and it's always a blast. Highlight of that was getting to hang with and turn some laps with retired racer Lou Peck (212), who is a great friend and competitor. Was a bit tired Monday but I did some laps, stayed up too late again cause I couldn't drag myself to bed. Forced myself to stay in my bubble and get out for every session on rainy Tuesday, and was rewarded by a relaxing and beautiful Wednesday; the best and most fun trackday for me yet this season.
Thank you to all my sponsors(listed in my signature) and a huge thanks again to my RSP Racing teammates, my ECK Racing and G2 friends and family, Sav from Olympus Racing, our pit crew for the endurance race, Tony and Graham from MTAG, Keith & Holly, and Bill for coming up even though they weren't racing, and all my other friends at the track, for your support, advice and help in all matters, directly and indirectly related to racing.
I copy/paste portions from one weekend to the next, and just had to delete the part about feeling strong and focused from last round. I didn't leave this one feeling that way, but I've got 5 weeks until LRRS Round 4, and I intend to use it. I'll be back there mentally and physically by July, and I intend to come out swinging again.
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