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Hey race fans, you didn't think I was taking the whole winter off, did you? Nah. When Billy Saine asked if we wanted to do some crazy Ceparano Endurance Classic at jennings gp, we said yes, what's that? 3 races totaling 11 hours at a track we have yet to ride, both directions on a brand new Kawi zx4rr. Hell yeah! Billy, Kerry Smith , Semir Faz and myself committed to the project.
Friday practice got off to a damp start but the weather just kept improving and we all got laps in on both the sv and the 4rr in both directions.
First impressions of the track were, fast and flowing followed by a series of tight corners and short straights finishing with 2 more fast corners. Abrasive and grippy pavement. Fun.
First impressions of the 4rr: basically a comfy, heavier 125gp bike. It rails corners, brakes incredibly well with DPBrake pads, and accelerates surpringly hard if you keep it screaming between 12 and 14k rpms. It did have 2 flaws: a sloppy gearbox and a tendency to chatter badly while trail braking hard. But overall it had everyone smiling from ear to ear.
Before we knew it race 1 was on. They did an F1 style rolling start, which was interesting. I had the first stint, so I set out hot and took the holeshot leading out the first lap. After a few laps, a red flag came out, so we lined up for a second F1 start. I battled with the leaders for most of the session despite struggling with gear changes.
I handed the bike off to Kerry after 25 minutes and she headed out and got into a rhythm only to surprise us pitting in early running out of fuel. Whoops! We burned so much more in race conditions that we couldn't go the planned distance. We fueled the bike and sent her back out revising our strategy.
Billy did his stint, then Sam but the tire was clearly not going to go the distance. I had over cooked it early on.
Tire swap done we finished out the first race 4th in class.
A quick lunch and it was time for race 2 in reverse direction. The track does not flow as well in this direction and the whole back section becomes stop n go. I think it penalized the 4rr more than the other bikes due to it's lack of torque and a severe chatter when trying to trail brake deep and hard.
Billy lined up for the start of this one. The bike was already struggling to change gears, especially 3rd to 4th and 4th to 5th. Pretty much the gears we needed but we soldiered on.
Semir took stint 2 and also struggled with shifting gears. I Went next, followed by Kerry.
We all struggled with chatter and shifting woes, but we had a better fueling strategy and we made 1 tire go the whole way, finishing an improved 2nd in class.
Sunday dawned cool and breezy, but full sun. A single 5 hour race was on the docket. By this time the gearbox was really giving us fits but we thought 2 rear tires would definitely go the distance.
Billy Saine lined up for the rolling start. He crossed the line in 4th on lap one but immediately found a grinding false neutral in the fastest corner and ran off track only to re enter in last. Doh!
He recovered and we soldiered on. The sound of the screamer pegging the Rev limiter could be heard from all sections of the track as we wrestled it through the gears.
We made it halfway on the first tire so we confidently slotted a fresh one on and I went out hot to recover some ground. I ran a solid pace with a fastest lap of 1:23.6 and a long string of low 24s despite very slow and deliberate gear changes. The bike was on rails.
Kerry, Billy and Sam ran solid stints all while testing the Rev limiter over and over.
When Billy passed the bike to me for the last stint, all he said was, “the tire is just starting to get squirrely” OK, I'm thinking I can bring her home easily running around 1:30. My first few laps were at the 31 mark and the little 400 was spinning it up like a Superbike in the rain!
Determined to hold my pace, I rode on my feet the whole time as the bike skated across the track both on entry and exit. I was getting lapped by the fast teams who had done multiple tire swaps, fronts included. It felt dangerous but the race was almost over and we didn't have any more tires to swap anyway.
The front was now smoked too, and I was sliding both ends. I nearly highsided in turns 1, 2, 6, 11 on quite a few occasions. My pace slowed to 32, then 33 when I FINALLY saw the 1 minute board. My stomach was in knots, but I was going to make it. I actually thought, they are never going to believe me when I describe this. I took the checkers 3rd in class and the next thing I heard was Billy saying, “holy shit! Look at that tire!”
I have to say a huge thanks to Billy for inviting us to ride the special bike. He put so much into this. We didn't baby it, but we didn't destroy it either!
Thanks also go to DPBrakes, MTAGPIRELLI, as well as Mark Tenn pirelli and Tom Ceparano for making this happen!
And finally to my teammates, Kerry Smith, Billy Saine and Semir Fazlic for all the hard work, fast riding, and big laughs
Endurance racing makes for good friendships!
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Originally Posted by Stoneman
