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Race report LRRS Round 1
1st practice
In the pits, I watched as group 2 was out for practice, but I thought it was group 1. I couldn’t hear the announcer, and I was in group 3. Group 2 came in and 3 went out. While I still had half of my gear off, someone came up to me and said “isn’t that your group out there”. Sure enough it was, so I scrambled to get ready and went out. Immediately, things were not going well at all. I started making mistakes with the shifting as the reverse pattern is still new to me. I only got one lap in practice before the checkered flag was waved ending the practice session. My head wasn’t in it, and these mistakes I wasn’t making 2 weeks ago at VIR.
2nd practice
I got my head clear before going out for second practice and everything started to click. My tire warmers had quit on me, so I was going out on cold tires. Right off the bat, I got into the groove and was riding well. I wasn’t making the shifting errors anymore, and found myself passing quite a few other riders. When the checkered went out, I had a big smile on my face as I knew that I had some good races coming up. After the practice times were posted, and the grid sheets were up, I checked my times against my competitors. Everything seemed pretty even so I committed to my strategy for the day: get a good start, get ahead and keep ahead.
Race 1 GTL
I started in the second wave, first position. The GTU and GTO bikes were in the first wave. First wave goes out and I get myself in position for my start. Green flag drops, and I get an awesome start. I find myself way off ahead, and coming into turn 3 there is a waving yellow flag which may have aided me since I was in the lead. I held my lead for the first lap and a half until Scott Magnuson passed by. I tried to stay with him, but he pulled away more and more. After the second lap, I caught up to one of the slower GTO riders and found myself hung up by him. Chun Eng and Lori Shaw made there way past me while I was trying to figure out how to get around this guy. Several times I would pass him in the corners, but then he would power past me in the straight. Christian Smutnick got around us too, and then I got an opportunity in turn 9 for an inside pass, and I took it. With the GTO guy behind me, I worked on catching up to Christian. I was about 15 yards behind him in turn 12 and heading for the start finish line. I was able to pass him at the start finish just as we reached the half way point in the race, but then he passed me on the brakes for turn one. Just then there was a red flag. At first I thought the race was over, but the race officials declared that there would be a restart and there was more then half the race left. On the restart, I launched at too high an RPM, and wheelied the bike. I then chopped the throttle and the bike came down so quickly it bounced. Trying to make the most of it, I got back on the gas, but the damage was already done. Scott was ahead, and this time Christian was too. Between the battles in the first half of the race, and the length of time for the restart, I started to really get tired. Somehow I managed to still turn some decent laps. Lori and Chun still got around me, and I was trying to stick to Christian. At some point, I got around the GTO guy again, and little by little, lap after lap I was gaining ground on Christian. At the start/finish line on the last lap, Christian was still about 100 yards ahead of me, and I was sure that I could catch him. By turn 12, I closed the gap to about 25 yards, so I tried to get the best drive out of the corner that I could, but it wasn’t enough to catch him. My finishing time was 0.1 seconds from taking 4th place. When we pitted, I congratulated Christian on running a good race. In this race, I was able to match last years personal best lap.
Race 2 LWSS
Keith Draghi came up to me earlier in the day and joked that on the track that it would be just me and him, well that pretty much was the case as we were the only two on the grid sheet. He was in first position, I was in second. We were joined by a couple of late entries, Stephen Mayer and Katherine Hammond. Once again, I had a great start, and lead the race until Keith passed me going into turn 11. Shortly after, we got another red flag and had to restart. This time I got another great start, but so did Keith. I led until he passed me on the inside in turn 6. I tried to keep up with him, but that wasn’t working out. By now, I was really getting tired, and I found that I was putting a lot of weight on my bars, especially while braking. This was draining the energy right out of me. Just trying to maintain position was my goal now, and I felt as though I was really falling back. Finally, I made it to the finish and took second place. Later I found that my 2 starts in the second race were my 2 best out laps ever, and my last 3 laps were my fastest in the race even though I was beat by then.
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Originally Posted by Honclfibr
I enjoyed a few myself... 
