0
Race Report – Rd6– 9/1-2/12
Arrival
Not much to say other than traffic sucked and I actually flew in a day early so I had more than 3 hours of sleep this weekend.
Friday Practice – Penguin Advanced
In an effort to suck less I decided to take the Penguin advanced class and hope to glean some info that might help my campaign out. I signed up on the GSXR specifically to get some seat time since I cannot seem to get into a groove on this bike at all.
First the disclaimer: This is a great class, and I highly recommend any racer take it at some point in their career. The info from the track walk alone made the class worthwhile; it will be some time before I can process all that I have learned.
That said, this was a disaster for me personally. I went on a bike I am uncomfortable with and the first thing that we go over is body position..and then a follow the leader where we are critiqued. I don’t know about all of you but I have an extremely difficult time getting into proper form at 40mph so I looked like crap.
2nd session, more body positioning stuff. They needed people to volunteer their bikes for it which I did but it meant no warmers for the next session. I have had some hard-earned experience which tells me that I don’t push on cold tires so I go out again, not leaving 3rd gear and just looking for reference points and allowing everyone to pass me pretty much everywhere. It is at this point where one of the control riders/instructors stops to tell me what a great job I am doing ??!? I know he is trying to be encouraging but I seriously didn’t top 90mph the entire time and barely moved on the seat. This sat pretty poorly with me.
Throughout the rest of the day the talks that I had with other instructors/Eric Wood basically tell me that I am doing it wrong. Not just parts of it, all of it :-p
I don’t want them to think that I am unappreciative as this is all fantastic info to have. It was my own fault for doing this right before a race weekend where now I am second guessing every move I make on the bike. I clearly have a LOT of work to do and am very grateful for the opportunity to learn from some of the best names in the business. I am anxiously looking forward to some seat time where I can work on what I have learned!
Saturday Practice
Practice was uneventful except for still not being able to dip below 1:17.1 on the GSXR and some 1:19s on the SV where traffic was utterly miserable.
I still felt entirely uncomfortable on the GSXR. This will be my 4th? race weekend on it with a few practice days and even though I hadn’t ridden an I4 in some time I figured that I should be getting more comfortable on it by now. Finally I had enough and brought it to Pete Kates of GMD Computrack who worked his voodoo and informed me that the frame was bent into a pretzel to the right and it was stuffed so hard in the front that the bike currently had 91 or 94mm of trail (cant remember). Add to the fun that the supposedly “just rebuilt” TTX shock had a blown preload o-ring and was pissing oil and needed to be redone. *sighs* Considering how well the rest of the bike was tended to I asked Pete to look at the front end as well and chalked this one up as a loss.
Between a popped motor, transmission, C12, tires, and now frame/suspension damage added to airfaire just to get here this now puts my yearly LRRS budget on par with some AMA teams :/ I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.
GTL
Still tenuously holding on to my 3rd place in points I really needed to do something spectacular here. Gridded in 1C I was struggling mentally with all the info bouncing around in my head from Penguin. I wasn’t even looking at the flagger when the race started and consequently got a craptastic start.
I’ll spare the details, I got passed a lot, made a few passes, and generally rode poorly. Luck reared its ugly head and decided to toss a nod in my favor for once when I saw that one of my main competitors for the points podium, Seth Hahn (#91) had unfortunately crashed out of 3rd place allowing me to slide across the line in 5th. I think this gives me a 4 point advantage over Glenn Coolbeth (#95) for 3rd but he has proven to be a far more consistent and faster rider than I am. It will all come down to the finish in round 7 to see if I can hang on.
Outlap: 1:22.533
Best Lap: 1.19.730 (bleh. 2.6 seconds off of my best)
Finish: 5th out of 25
Lightweight Grand Prix
THIRTY people in this grid! WOOHOO!!! I was hoping that with the stress of the GTL out of the way that I would be able to relax and have some fun here. I had a less than stellar grid of 3A and got a mediocre start. I basically sat on the rear tire of Ted Temple for most of the race and was just too messed up to make any kind of a pass attempt. Multiple times I had conflicting lines going through my head and by the time I decided what to do I missed my brake markers by a mile. I apologize to anyone that was riding anywhere near to me, I must have looked like I had some sort of neurological disorder.
Outlap: 1:24.244 (LOL)
Best Lap: 1:20.166 (Hahahahaha, 3 full seconds off my best)
Finish: 13th out of 30
Sunday Practice
I tried to get my head right and fell back to riding by my old markers and style. Still indecisive and uncommitted but better than the previous day.
Middleweight Supersport
Thanks to the GSXR being totally fubar’d I skipped this race.
Lightweight Superbike
3D, good start. Ride like moron, get passed lots.
Outlap: 1:23.567
Best Lap: 1:19.971 (pathetic but back into teens at least)
Finish: 11th out of 23
Conclusion
My inability to focus past my issues is really becoming an problem for me and is something that I will focus on before the next race weekend. Once again I am forced to take a step backwards in my riding but I am trying to focus on the positive: I nailed T3 finally this weekend and have made improvements in T9-10. I didn’t crash. I have a great team and an incredibly supportive wife and family.
Thanks as always to all of my sponsors and a shout out to Todd of Heroic Racing Apparel for the new suit! Me likey!
Also huge thanks to Brendan, Eric, and Virginia for coming up to share our pits and help out! You guys are amazing and I cant thank you enough for your help!
Despite the racing part sucking, I am very glad for the time that I got to spend with the people of LRRS which makes these difficult weekends bearable: ECK, RSP, T1A, Garage 2 hooligans, et al. You guys rock!
I will man up and be coming back to the final LRRS round with a vengeance!
Finally, thanks to Arcy of OTMPix.com for the great shots. If I cant be fast, at least he can make me look that way.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Sqzeplay74
