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Yup, I'm totally stealing that phrase from BORN for this one.
Last round I was left with a failing clutch resulting in a DNS in LWSB. The gremlin turned out to be clutch pack wear, my total stack height was down 1mm from new. Not enough to see noticeable wear across 9 frictions and 8 steels, but enough to cause me trouble on the track. Turns out slippers A) wear fast if you coast at all, bad habit I need to fix and B) are worse than dry clutches when it comes to stack height sensitivity. It took a full set of new fibers to get it back into it's happy place.
Anyone got a YZ80/85 or YZ125? I've got a stack of just barely broken in fibers for ya... (Yes, my bike's clutch is literally based on a YZ80 clutch pack, just with more fibers/steels.)
That sorted I arrived at the track with no real plan of attack other than 'go faster.' This is something I've recognized I need to work on, when I'm off track I know there area areas I'm slow, but I've only got a few ballpark reference points and if you ask me to describe my line for a lap, I can't do it in detail. Once the green flag drops I switch to riding on instinct. In practice or at a TD I can go point to point to point but for some reason I don't when the racing starts. It makes it hard to improve if you can't say where you're doing it wrong in the first place.
With no good plan, I opted to work on two things I knew I've been doing wrong, body position and throttle out of the corners. I've noticed in the last couple of rounds when pics show up I find my upper body isn't really moving. So, in first practice I made a point of pointing my foot and swinging my upper body over. Damn if that didn't just feel right and naturally led to me getting on the throttle sooner with a faster ramp up. I came in from first practice feeling GOOOOOD. So good that after noting a few riders I respect were skipping second practice to save their energy for the GTL I decided to emulate them.
The GTL was long, hot, and had too many red and yellow flags. It was an omen of how the rest of the day was going to go. When racing has to stop because you've run out of ambulances, that's not good.
In any case, between restarts I tried to get my head down and continue getting my BP right. I ended up battling with John who's now on an SV, his time on a 250GP machine showed as he carried awesome corner-speed but I had some motor on him. I ended up getting in front of him for the lead at one point, beating him into 1 but I psyched myself out into 3 letting him retake the spot. At that point I ran out of endurance and just followed. Between all the restarts Rick ended up getting 2nd overall, splitting John and I. Result, 3rd place and a new personal best of 1:21.934. Unlike my prior PBs this one was backed up with a few laps at 1:21.9 and some 22s, so it wasn't a flier but a legit sustained pace.
LWGP had a fun start. The flag dropped and all I could see was Mark Fox shooting for the sky as he put his SV straight up in the air. Meanwhile Savas was gunning hard for T1 and I was slow off the line and not able to beat him. I hung onto and actually gained on Savas for a couple laps but then he just slowly pulled away. By the end I think he had a solid half a lap on me. Turns out someone reported him for a jump start so I ended up with the win on that one. No new PBs but 5 out of 8 laps were under my prior PB.
Edit: I dunno how I spaced on this, but Mark came back from his self imposed deficit and got by me. I had to fight to get that position back from and keep it for the rest of the race. Sneaky, determined bastard!
ULSB is the race I care about and I went into this one hungry. I got one of my best launches to date, new best outlap of 1:24.3 and proceeded to put my head down and got the job done. I managed to catch a few expert motards for icing on the cake. 1st place, and a bunch of low 22s. Perfect end to the day.
Ok, so my day wasn't quite over, being asked to show someone my tongue at the awards ceremony was unique...
Sunday wasn't my day. I've only got the one race, LWSB, and I only really run it for additional track time, I'm not fighting for a championship in it. So with the forecast in question, I went into cruise mode and skipped practice after sleeping in. Waking up feeling like I had a hangover from being so dehydrated the day before wasn't helping any. My plan was to wait for race time to see if I was swapping tires and what my mood was. When the monsoon hit, I figured all was good, it'd be solid rain so if I run I know what tires to go out on, fine. Unfortunately my trailer sprung a leak so when I braved the weather to get my cellphone I opened the door to a mini flood.
HULK SMASH!
I ended up tearing the inside of my AC apart to find the welds had failed on one side of it's support structure. This took all the tension off the roof gasket causing it to allow all that rain in. FARK. I did some triage, angled the trailer to keep the water from building up on the roof and used my fan to dry things out. At that point the decision was made, no racing. I will not go on track if I'm distracted or otherwise not 100% focused on the game at hand and this blew any concentration I might have had. At this point I've got no chance in the class and my overall standing in AM is going to nosedive compared to the guys that can run 6 or 7 classes a weekend. Downside to a homologation special, d-oh...
I instead spent the rest of the afternoon helping my garage mates out where I could while drying and packing things. I'd like to apologize if I was short with anyone today, it wasn't you.
Special thanks to Dan's girlfriend who's name I've once again spaced on. During one of the many times I got to sit on hot pit due to a red flag she took it upon herself to find my cooler, find powerade and then find me on the grid, which was awesome.
Special thanks to Dan for our 'date' Friday night. Next time try the Lemon cake sweetie.
Extra special 'HI!' to Dana, good to see ya!
2nd overall in GTL to Rick K, dunno if I can bump him and his big Duc out of the lead.
2nd overall in LWGP with Mark Fox breathing down my neck. John Donald has bumped to EX so he won't hold the top spot for much longer.
1st overall in ULSB, goal now is to keep that spot while dropping my times 2 seconds so I can be obnoxious as an Expert.
6th overall in LWSB, don't expect this to improve unfortunately.
I need to work on markers now, I know I'm braking early and as a result coasting into the corners, I can't vague guess my way past that which is going to require rewiring how I ride under a green flag. Hopefully I can do it without moving backwards for a bit. Time to start reviewing notes and vids...