Friday, May 13, 2005.
I got to the track about 3pm intending to replace the tires I raced on all last season, flush the coolant out of the radiator, and maybe change the oil. But the weather was so nice, and the track so inviting, that I decided to sign up for the afternoon practice session run by the Penguin School . I swapped out the coolant for straight water, checked the oil sight-glass ("looks like fresh oil to me"), paid my $70, and suited up. I took it easy for a few laps, then as the tires seemed to be working OK I wicked it up a little bit. By lap 6 or 7 I was feeling pretty good and as I came down the hill at T10 and leaned to the right to get back onto the main track the front tire just went away. The bike slid into the tires lining the wall at the outside of 10 and I followed it in. No real damage to me but I broke the windscreen, the clutch lever, and mangled the right-side OSF proto-type peg and rearset. Dangit. The brake lever end was broken off and I held off replacing it. Inspecting the front tire later showed that I'd scrubbed off all the loose rubber built up on the edges - I think I may have leaned more coming through 10 than previously and got onto that messy edge, reducing traction just enough (see photo at right).

So I dragged my wheels over to Street & Competition for a clutch lever, windscreen, and new tires....I got a soft Pirelli DOT front and a comparable soft DOT race rear...I got a good deal, since the rear was a leftover S&C doesn't actually stock any more, but it is this year's tire. I was told 28psi rear, 31 front. I inquired of Mickey (from whom I bought the bike 2 years ago) as to the vintage of the GSXR bodywork I have, and he more or less laughed at me. But he did recall that he'd bought the bike a couple years old, and the bodywork had been new at the time, so I guessed '01. Turned out I guessed OK - the new windshield fit fine. I left the new wheels in the trailer, stopped on the way out and registered for 2 Saturday races, then went home for the night.

Saturday, May 14,2005.

Seeing as how I only had to put on a set of wheels and swap over a rearset and a couple levers, Connie and I slept in a little. Up at 05:30, on the road at 06:30. Accuweather showed rain to the west, but as it got closer it was breaking up. The forecasters generally called for scattered clouds, some with showers. It was in the 30's, but it made it to about 60 by mid-afternoon. The scattered showers must have gone elsewhere pretty much all day. It sprinkled a teensie bit for about 30 seconds at about 12:30, but that was it. Otherwise it was mostly overcast, and generally a perfect day for racing.

Once at the track, I put the wheels on, Connie was kind enough to go purchase a new brake lever for me at S&C, and I put the freshly-shortened one in the trailer as an emergency spare, replaced the clutch lever, bolted on the spare old CF-motorsports right rearset I had in the truck and ran through tech. I just barely made my first practice, and spent 8 laps slowly increasing speed to scrub in the new skins. Life is good. I put the windscreen on for the second practice, and went a little faster, trying to get into the shifting rhythm, and get myself cued back up to braking and cornering markers.

A few reports back, I described Turn1...this time, I've got Turns 2 and 3 on my mind...Coming around 1A, I stay to the right and try to hit the apex at the mid-corner cone at Turn2. There is a little curbing there, so I don't want to get toooo close, but I don't want to leave loads of extra room, either, there's a bump as I transition from the infield pavement onto the Nascar oval at Nascar-2. The oval pavement is banked by 12-degrees (according to NHIS.COM, and bales of blue air-fence along the outside of T2 protect me from the somewhat unforgiving concrete wall behind it. As I apex 2, I try to keep my knee down and my weight forward as I open the throttle. I enter T2 one gear down from the front straight high, and RPMs are low but the beauty of torquey-twins is that I can just leave it down one all the way to T3. The really fast guys grab a gear or even two in between 2 and 3, but I have found that the run is so short that I do better just concentrating on my path and smooth throttle/braking inputs than messing with the shifter. So, exiting 2, I drift up the pavement towards the concrete, just about the time the air-fence ends, I'm making my nearest approach, but by this time, I'm almost straight up and down, and my butt is back in the middle of the seat with my knees tucked into the bodywork. I work my way back to the left side of the pavement, but I try to always leave one bike-width there in case some really fast guy tries to sneak in. I don't want him creaming me from behind at warp speed because I pinched him off, ya know? If I get a really good drive out of 2 (which happened, uh, ONCE this weekend, I think) I can just bang the rev-limiter at about 10,000 RPM before shutting down when I hit the first of three cones along the outside of the track at 3. I sit up lock my elbows, squeeze the tank with my knees to keep from sliding forward too much, and squeeze the front brake as hard as I dare. It's a lot like doing a pushup with your hands down near your waist. At about the 1.5 cone point, I clutch and go down one gear (don't forget, I've got GP shifting, so since I'm sitting UP, I lift the lever UP), and slide my butt to the right on the seat, stick out a knee and crane my head right and up the hill. The 4 goals in going around T3 for me are (a) not apex so close as to hit the heavy alligator-strips on the inside, (b) drift wide enough after the apex to make a smooth arc and get to the smoother pavement seam on the left side of the track, (c) not drift so wide past the apex so as to get caught in the scary dirt patch/grass/curbed region about 1 foot to the left of the smoothest part of aforementioned pavement seam, (d) be on the gas a little right past apex, cranking it up as I go up the hill. I noticed this weekend that a couple guys who otherwise run about the same times as I do were on the gas much sooner than I usually am here and getting better drives out of the corner, so I'm trying to emulate them. OK, that's enough track-description for today. Maybe I'll try 4-5-6 next time.

At Rider's meeting, Jerry advised us that if we pre-register, we can cancel up until the day of the race and get all the money back...maybe I will try preregistering next time. He also reported that as a result of an ambulance-crew fatality somewhere in the country last year that some changes were being instituted for corner-workers at OSHA's behest ("We're from the government, we're here to help", right?), including mandatory helmets and reduced on-track presence when the track is hot, meaning riders have to help get their own bikes out of the way if they can instead of just running off the pavement as many used to (and may still) do. He also announced that a former LRRS racer, Jim Lester, had been killed in a traffic crash in FL, leaving behind a widow and two small children. There will be a benefit auction June 11, Click here for more info from the LRRS site, Click here for the Roadracing-world writeup.

RACE #3, GTL, 1/2 hour race
There were 32 experts registered for the first wave, and somehow I wound up just back of mid-grid, even with my Friday registration. I got an OK start, and was about 12th or so into T1, staying to the outside just keeps working for me there. Though I did my best, the fast guys walked away - but surprise surprise, the guys behind me weren't lining up to pass - I was pretty well staying ahead of the back half of the grid. WooHoo! About lap 4, Rob Ruggerio on the Gengras-Harley Buell came by me on the brakes into T3, and I got to chase him around for several laps. I was able to outbrake him into 1 on the next lap, but he gave a little squirt into 1A that pulled him ahead of me...then I showed him some wheel in 6, but he didn't budge, and I couldn't make it stick going around his outside. The tires and the bike could, I think, but I didn't have it in me. He and I pushed each other pretty well for 8 or 9 laps and being motivated does good things to the laptimes. I turned a 1:22.4, which is less than a second off my best time ever (1:21.8, last year), and a bunch of 1:23s and 1:24s. Ricky Doucette went by in short order. Damn, that boy's fast. Then Ted Temple came by me on the brakes hard into 3, and got kinda wide, but stayed in front...I almost caught him going up 4 because of his terrible drive out after running so wide, and he waved back at me, shaking his head - I think the pass must have felt worse from his side than it did from mine, because he never interfered with my race, but I'm still glad he's thinking of me.

Rob and I lapped several of the slower amateurs (who used to be called juniors - a naming convention change that I'm still trying to get used to) but we got caught behind a couple of amateurs taking lines that were scary enough that I hesitated passing. Rob got by them but I got stuck a bit longer and lost touch with him. I'm still not very good at passing people. Then I caught BJ Worsham about lap 19, which isn't nearly the feat it would be if I were on a prod-twin bike like his (I have something like a 20% horsepower advantage on his EX500, so I *ought* to be able to go by him). He waved. I waved. I got a good run through 1/1a/2 and caught Rob on the back straight, just as he and I got to T3, there was a motard on the left side of the track and, I think, and EX taking a mid-line into T3. I made the mistake of trying to stick it in under the motard. The EX slowed more than I expected, then the Motard cut across my front tire, and though I don't remember the reflex, I'm sure I grabbed the brake...based on my bike's sliding trajectory, I grabbed that brake a little before the apex and down I went.

I ground off some more of the right side frame-guard (Thanks for those, Mickey!). I missed all the bikes in my little cluster and didn't scoop anyone else to the ground with me (thank heaven for little favors), and BJ later said my bike was spinning along the pavement just ahead of his front tire. I never saw my bike until I came to rest, by which time it was stopped. I didn't even realize it had spun, as opposed to just sliding out. Being my second crash of the weekend, I was more skilled at it: I balled up my fists and tried to hold my arms fairly close to my side. When I stopped, I was near the left side of the track - I looked back and saw no bikes right behind me, so I hopped up and went to the bike, picked it up and wheeled it behind the protective barrier, per the corner-workers' instructions (Thanks, Mike Braley, for being there!). Before I got there, though, I dropped the damn bike on its left side just for good measure (actually, I wasn't well balanced and let it go rather than fall on top of it) breaking the clutch lever. The initial crash this time didn't just bend a rearset, though, I broke the right CFM peg and lever clean off. Fortunately, it didn't take the backing plate or master-cylinder with it That crap gets expensive!

As I waited for the last two laps of the race to pass, Connie came over to see if I was OK - She, of course, had been watching in Turn 3, and got to see the whole thing. He words were "You could see it coming..." *Sigh* I wish I'd seen it coming - I'd have skipped that party! Anyway, I assured her I was ok, and sent her off to buy yet another clutch lever, and met her at the trailer. I pretty well junked the entire CF-Motorsports rearset. I hammered my OSF brake lever straight and swapped out the bent backing plate and peg-mount for new *flat* pieces (sent over by Chris with Jason, THANKS, GUYS!), put on the new clutch lever and returned my previously shortened "emergency" brake lever back into service. I twisted the handlebars around a bit, but they both seemed straight enough, once I got them located on the forks, life was good.

RACE #9, LWSS, 15 min race
With 15 registrants, I was in the last row, at the next-to-left position (4-B), right next to Tony Luongo aboard a naked SV. He used to work at Rochester Motorsports...I loaned him my white race-suit to try a trackday about 3 years ago, and clearly he got bit by the bug. He and I were pretty closely matched for this race. and ran pretty steady 1:24s. We diced a little, but neither of us would really give in. We caught Sargent and the three of us kinda ran together a while. I passed Sargent under brakes, then he passed me back, then I passed him, but he and Tony both generally got better drives off 3 and 12 than I did. On the last lap, Sargent caught me and passed for position by about 1.5 feet at the start-finish, a great run on his part. As I should have been in the first race, I was a mid-pack kinda guy. I'm thinking I'll take the Penguin advanced class soon, and see if I can't shave some time off, as I seem to have plateau'd around 1:24 with occasional 1:22s, which is 6 seconds slower than what this bike can do. The results will be online at http://www.lrrsracing.com soon.

Having gone all last year without trying to grind off any paint, I weathered two terrestrial events this weekend. Sunday morning found me reasonably intact, with only modest bruising on my ribs and legs - but I'm pretty sure nothing is broken (I'm trying not to sneeze, though!). Being a glutton for punishment, I'll be back next time. Until then, keep the dirty side down, everyone!

SUMMARY (As expensive as I've had in a long long time):

W paddock pass - $25 penguin practice - $70 2 clutch levers - $18 2 brake levers - $32 Right side CF-Motorsports rearset complete - $170 worth of hardware I probably won't replace Right side OSF rearset parts - $100 worth of parts I will replace Windscreen - $58 Tires (mounted/balanced) - $290 Post-Registration for one GT ($120) and one Sprint ($60) = $180 C paddock pass - $20 Food - $10 (we bring our own food - waaaay cheaper than that track-food) Gas - $25 Baxley Sport-Chock, used - $175 Grand total: ~$1,000 (about $300 of which was due to crashing). Ouch.

-Wade Bartlett, May 15, 2005