Race reports
April 15-16: Summit Point
Pat #233
Well this being the first race of the year I was rusty to say the least. I did not really get up to speed from the year before, but I did ok.
Vintage 7 MediumWeight - I got a really really crappy start and a lot of bikes came by me. This race was run in conjunction with HeavyWeight Twins Superstock and V6 HW. But I made a great pass on the brakes into turn 1, and took the lead out of the V7 bikes. I ran a few great laps and was pretty far ahead of 2nd place in the V7 bikes, I was passing mostly HWT SS bikes. A few big Aprilia Mille's and Ducatis would pull me on the front straight and I'd have to get them on the brakes of mid-corner later. But I was running a great race, all alone in 1st place. Well, I came up on a novice Ducati in the carousel and followed him thru turn 9, where he was holding me up big time but pulled a gap on me with all that torque. I wen tto set up to pass him on the outside of turn 10, but he kept drifting left to make the turn and I ran out of room. He never knew I was there I bet, but I was coming up on him at warp 9 whereas he was parking it to enter turn 10. I ran straight off the track and thought I would save it just fine, but since I was going so fast I was coming up on the tire wall and decided to ditch it instead of possibly hitting the tires. The bike was fine, but by the time I got up and inspected the bike enough to ride it I figured I had lost the race anyways. Well, all that was broken was a fairing stay, until when I went to re-tech and saw my front wheel was bent really good! Must've been from a rock or a ditch, it was a wild ride through the grass. Well I swapped my tire onto the spare wheel and got ready for my other 3 races of the day, I was really pissed that I only had 2-3 laps left and I had crashed. It was my fault though, I shouldn't have been so greedy wanting to pass the slow novice, I should've just drafted him on the front straight and get him on the brakes into turn 1. Oh well, hindsight is always 20/20....
Formula 2 - I got a horrible start, totally blew it. A ton of novice SV guys got by me on the start and I had a hard time getting by a lot of them. It was a pretty uneventful race, except for a few crazy passes some Asian dude made on me on a 125. He really was laying on top of me through the carousel. Well, I ran 1:26 pace and that is horrible considering I've ran 1:21's there before. I finished 8th out of 13 finishers.
HeavyWeight Twins SuperBike - With the new rules my bike is only legal in the Superbike HWT class, not Superstock (250cc two stroke vs. 1000 cc twins? come the fuck on.) This race was back-to-back with F2 so I was a little bit tired, and just wanted to get this race over with. Once again I got a horrible start and a lot of bikes came by me on the start. I ran a little better, turning low 1:24's but still off my pace. I dont really remember this race, but I finished 6th out of 7 bikes. There were a ton of bikes on track as it was run with C Superbike also.
V7 HeavyWeight - My last race of the day, finally. I got a decent start but Mike 917 got away by turn 1 into the traffic of the B Superbike crowd, and Aaron Brown and I got stuck behind an unbelievably slow expert on a gsxr750. He would park it on the brakes so bad it was unreal. We had to work thru traffic but after a few laps it was just myself, Aaron, and this slow guy on a 750 (looking at the results his best time was a fucking 27!). He could motor the hell out of me though, so it was hard to try to make a move on him. After what seemed like a lifetime, I passed him on the brakes into turn 5 and never looked back. I finished 2nd, although if I could've stuck with Mike I'm sure I could have challenged him for the win. But after a few laps he was gone, as he obviously had a better time with traffic. Oh well it was a fun weekend, other than the stupid crash. But hopefully I got the only crash out of my system for the entire season, just like last year (last year I crashed in the first race of the season, and stayed rubber-down the rest of the year).
Some pics that Kelly took:
All alone out in 1st place, before the crash. This is turn 10, I went straight off in the background and hit one of those rocks in the grass.
In the backsection, with Aaron Brown (yellow Ducati) stuck behind a slow GSXR750 guy.
Some short videos, from the backsection while we were stuck behind the slow GSXR750.
