Race reports

October 21-24: Homestead-Miami Int'l Speedway

2004 CCS Race of Champions

Pat #233

After being in Atlanta the weekend before for Georgia Tech Homecoming (um, yeah, LET'S GO JACKETS), I got back to work for one day and then left for Miami tuesday morning. I drove to Savannah to pick up Sanee Ooi (am #454), and grab a night's sleep before finishing the trip to Homestead. For some reason my truck decided to give me a lot of fits during this leg, and after replacing the O2 sensor and battery I thought I had it sorted out. The truck ran for 9.5 hours FINE until we got about 10 miles from Homestead.  It would just DIE while rolling along on the highway. Well sure enough the truck would die every 2 miles from there on in. Very aggravating, unpredictable, and not what I wanted to have to deal with when I'm 1,100 miles from home, with the trailer and all my stuff in tow. I digress..... we bungled with the battery connections and replaced the serpentine belt (thanks Timmy Rinaldi for calling that one out and helping me, I can't say enough about this guy) at Homestead and everything "seemed" ok with the truck.

Well I got to Homestead and began settling in, and after Jim McConnell (Wizard Racing) said he had open space in his garage, I moved down to garage #2 which was much closer to all my friends - the garages were great except for the track nazis and having to leave the track at 6pm every day (I hate that!). Oh well.......... theme for the weekend.....

I got my bike through tech wed afternoon - they put me in the MW/HW/UNL/Supertwins amateur practice group since they said the Lightweight/125 practice group was really crowded. Bu they said if I wasn't having good practices with the bigger bikes, they would swap me the sticker for the LW group. Didn't have much time to fool around since we got booted out of the track by 6pm. Well I got out for my first session thursday morning after only looking at a few sections of the track, so I was still unsure of where the fast line was. I was really surprised at the small elevation change between turns 3 and 4 - I never got a good look at that part of the track before I left the night before. Well I wasn't too fast my first session, just checking out all the pavement. The concrete patches were really smooth, makes Summit Point look like crap in comparison! I was pretty timid going off the banking into turns 1 and 9. Little did I know you could really fly through there. Well the big bikes would really dust me on the straights, then park it in the heavy braking zones, killing my corner entry speed and forcing me to make some bold passes during practice. I felt however, I should stay with some of the 600/750/1000 guys since some of them were cutting some smokin laps....

Thursday after lunch we had one more practice session where I only ran some 1:42-43 times, even though I felt like I was pushing it. After that third and final session, I got my tires off and went to put on some terrible tires I had in the garage to run for the rest of the practice sessions of the week. I got ready to pit for Wizard Racing who was running the Team Challenge. Jim McConnell, Tim Rinaldi, and Dave Girardin were going to ride Jim's (recently acquired only a week or two earlier, and crashed the sunday prior to this event) '01 GSX-R1000. This bike can't be missed out on-track due to the *bright* PINK bodywork :) Well after getting some fresh rubber, fresh brake pads, and sorting out a wire that came loose from the connector leading from the ignition cylinder, the bike was ready for this 2h15min (or 69 laps) event. They were gridded on the front row, running GTO class, and Timmy was on for the first stint. He got a great start and was running well. Things were going fine, he was running 4th in class and 9th overall when, on the 26th lap, the bike was cut out dead on him going to turn 3. He got the bike in the grass on the inside of turn 3 and tried everything he could to figure out what was going on with the bike - it just wouldn't start. After Timmy was yelled at repeatedly by the corner workers to get away from the track he climbed through a hole in the fence and walked back to the pits. We were unsure of what had happened but knew the bike was off the course somewhere. Sadly, this was the end of the day for the team unless there was a red flag and the crash truck could bring the bike back to the hot pits for us to try and fix. Alas, no red flag but with about 20 laps left to go they finally let us take out the back-up bike, Jim's R6 which Dave got on and rode for the final 15-20 laps or so. Jim and I had already kicked back a few Bahama Mamas, so he wasn't going to ride and we knew we were going to be DQ'ed anyways. Oh well, just a random mishap as it turned out to be a loose wire running from the Power Commander - took 5 minutes to fix. If we had gotten a red flag we could've fixed the bike in no time and at least everyone would've been able to ride. Anyways, we just hashed it all out and then left the track, went to dinner at Outback (thanks to Jim's business friend Dave) and I went from there to the airport to pick up Kelly, then home to bed.

Friday morning another 2 practice sessions which really weren't of any note, still running the same times and trying out new lines in some of the corners. Homestead isn't particularly a 250 track as there aren't many longer sweepers, but a few hard braking zones I could take advantage of. Its definitely a horsepower track, bottom line. Helped out Jim, Dave, Timmy, and Sanee and called it a night. Thanks to Timmy for dinner that night, he lost the front in the HW SB race and we spent some time fixing his bike - most of the time just getting the gravel out of her!

Saturday yielded a few more laps in setup, making a small suspension change and working on braking especially. I worked up to a 1:39.97 lap time, but after the races saturday I saw a few guys in LW SS ran upwards of 1:35-37 laptimes no problem! No doubt these 3 fast guys were all from FLORIDA, imagine that? Anyways, I knew I had to step it up if I was going to dice with these guys for the win. But, by the numbers this didn't look very good for me sunday for my race, LW GP.

Well I got out for practice sunday morning and it was still a little damp and there was an oil spill in turn 6, the infield hard right hander. Below are a few pics from that turn where I got held up by an R1. Had to go around him wide entering and exiting turn 6 and just get by him. You could easily see the oil dry line and could go right around it or through it straight but this guy seriously got in my way. Kelly took these pics with her new camera which can snap a bunch of pics quickly in a short time......

After the practice session sunday morning  got those shagged tires off there and got the set I bought at Barber put on there, they were pretty fresh and I knew I could lay on the gas much harder in practice the next day and in the race. I was really taking it easy on the right turns on the gas since the tires I found in the garage were ridiculously worn on one side. I put the "good" side on the left, since Homestead is mostly lefts.... anyways I checked a few things over and was ready for my final  race of the '04 season.

Some pics from practice:

the front straight

A few shots from the pits before the race:

Well once they posted the grids I realized I was on the third row. For what reason, I didn't know - since I was a regional champ I didn't see why there were 3 guys from Florida and 2 from Illinois gridded ahead of me. Well I went up to scoring and they checked on it, YUP CCS screwed it up for me. I was ranked 59th in my class??????? Ummm, how about NO. I should've been ranked #1. And they said they couldn't change it. They told me I could move up one row, to the very right side of the grid on the 2nd row, but after the warm-up lap I saw how tight it was and I would've been starting from right behind another guy with no good lane to shoot through on the start. So I started from the third row. I got a terrible start, had to double clutch to keep the revs up and went around the first 2 laps only running from 5th place up to 4th or 3rd, when I missed a shift coming out of the final chicane and a guy came by me on the straights. The two leaders had gotten a little bit away from me, when I came off the back straight banking to a waving yellow, and saw bike parts all over the place with multiple bikes and riders off the track.  By the time I got through the mine field of parts in the track, I saw the red flag and came back onto hot pit - I almost overshot it as I was setting up for the final chicane.

Well back waiting I got off the bike and started praying that my clutch would hold up and I had enough gas. I figured I had enough gas since I put plenty in there, but I knew that my clutch might not survive another hard start. They said we wouldn't be held that long before the restart, so I didn't think I had enough time to get back and put another set of clutch plates in. Well they came around with a new grid sheet and I was on the outside (right side) of the first row - more where I should be at. It would be a 5 lap sprint.

Went out for another warm-up lap, and I found a few big metal parts in the track around turn 7! I had to stop on the warm-up lap and tell a cornerworker to get someone out there and clear those parts, it looked like a peg and some other metal bracket was still lying in the track! Finally got to the grid almost dead last and got to the front row, where I saw it was just me and one other guy there! Well, yep, the 2 fastest amateurs out there had taken each other out!

That got me feeling good that all I had to do was win this 5 lap scramble without worrying that some fast Florida guys could walk away with it.

I got a bad start again, having to clutch in again, but I went banzai on the brakes into turn 2 and took the lead - out in front right where I wanted to be.  Well one guy came by me on the 2nd lap, and I started to realize my clutch was going on the way out. I was not happy! By the 3rd lap the clutch was in real bad shape, and 2 more SV's came by me on the front straight. THERE IS NO WAY AN SV650 SHOULD BE ABLE TO PASS A TZ250 ON A LONG STRAIGHT!!! Well, obviously a TZ250 with a mostly-fried clutch can get passed.... pretty easily. I realized I had to get disgusting on the brakes and make some daring moves to stay with these guys since they would leave me driving out of the turns. Luckily 5th and 6th gear would hold pretty well, to get good speed on the long straights. On the 4th lap we came around and the leader was riding on the side of the track with his hand up, something was wrong. Then I realized the 2 guys in front of me were now 1-2!

I made two of the best laps of my weekend, going DEEP on the brakes and trying my best to just lay on the throttle but short-shift to get in higher gears and not let the clutch slip out on the top end. I ended up making up all the time on the leaders, telling myself I'm either going to win this thing or throw it in the weeds trying. Well I railed through turns 9 and 10,  and stuffed the 2nd place guy just before the chicane. This is where I should have thrown it in in front of the leader, but I stayed an inch off his pipe through the last chicane and we made a dash for the stripe. I drafted for a second then popped out, and I came up about 3 feet short at the line!  So I took 2nd place.

Oh well, 2nd place is first loser but its not so bad. I knew if I had a 100% clutch I would've been able to win the race - but  I was lucky some fast guys took each other out too. Kelly has a video of the finish too, and I blast past the winner right after the line - but the transponders don't lie and I came up a few milliseconds short.

Some pics from the race, no idea when though:

After getting undressed and being a little upset, I packed my stuff and started the long drive home. Not the best end to the 2004 season, but I still did very well and am looking forward to the future.

I'd like to thank DUNLOP TIRES, VP FUEL, AGV, EBC BRAKES, SILKOLENE, and 1-888-FASTLAP.

Special thanks to all my friends and supporters, and Kelly for putting up with my addiction.

See everyone next year - wherever it may be. Timmy Rinaldi is talking about running the AMA next year, and if so, I'd love to pit crew for him. He is an excellent rider and friend, and if he desires to take on the AMA big boys I want to support him with everything I can. It'd be fun to travel around to a lot of new tracks, meet a lot of cool people, and save money on my own racing. If I do that, I may race a little bit or just do a few trackdays to get my seat time.