| INTRO | ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR | FIVE | SIX | SEVEN | FINAL |
| Next chapter > Read the next installment of bwhip's big racing adventure.... |
Race Weekend One - 4/1/07 |
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That's the best way I can describe the racing experience. INTENSITY! Off the charts intensity. Fun, stressful, expensive, crazy, exhilarating, wild. Wow. Saturday was practice day, and because I didn't race last year, they put in me in the "slow" group. I used that as motivation, figuring I'd show them just how slow I was. Lap times on both the 600 and RC were decent, considering the fact that the weather started out very cold. In most sessions I was the fastest of the slow group (and would have been decent in the fast group). I slept much better than I expected to on Saturday night, as I forced myself to think of anything else I could. Every time I thought of starting on the grid, heading for that first turn, I'd get butterflies in my stomach that were pretty intense. At 4:30 AM I was wide awake (about an hour ahead of schedule), ready to go racing - mostly to get all of the anticipation over with! Sunday's morning weather was warmer, but with some threatening clouds. Fortunately, the weather turned out to be quite nice, with highs in the 60's.
The incident shook me up a bit, but it sort of put things in the proper perspective for me to start the day. I like to compete and to win, but winning motorcycle races isn't so important to me that I'll do stupid things and make people crash. Not gonna happen. If that means I'm not cut out for racing, so be it. But I'm out there to have fun, compete, and test and improve my skills against other riders. RACE ONE First race was the GTO Twins. Me on the RC against other twins of all shapes and sizes. Quite a few Ducatis, including a fast guy on his one-week-old 1098S. I'm about mid-pack on the grid. We do our warm-up lap and grid up. The start process happens faster than I expect, and before I know it, the green flag gets waved. My start is pretty poor, and the tight first turn comes up very quickly, with wall-to-wall bikes. I tiptoe up the inside line right along the curbing. Not easy to tiptoe on an RC. The other riders are much more aggressive than me into the first turn, and so now I've got some work to do. The first half of the first lap is absolutely nuts. Riders almost hitting each other, wildly cutting across my line. Nothing like a trackday! I find myself thinking, "Geez! Am I really ready for this?!! This is nuts!" Soon, though, things space out a bit, and now it's just me chasing the Ducs in front of me, watching for signs of where I can get by them. Slowly but surely, I start making some moves to pass them. Once in a while, I get passed back, but after a few more laps, it's me chasing a guy on a Mille, assuming that the guys I've passed are all now right on my tail as I try to get the Mille. There are a few super fast guys way out ahead of us, but I've got no chance of getting them. I see the white flag, meaning I've got one more lap to pass the Mille for whatever position that will be. I try to stay right on his tail, waiting for a little mistake so I can get around him. All of the turns where I'm really fast, he takes good, protective lines. Finally we're down to the last turn, a banked left-hander leading into the start/finish straight. He goes a bit wide, I duck in underneath him, take the lead, tuck in, and pin it. Come on, RC! I need everything you've got, baby! We drag race to the checkered flag, and right as we get there, out of the corner of my eye, I see his front wheel getting there a split second before me. UGH! So close! But really fun! It turns out he beat me by just .05 second! Five one-hundredths! He took fourth, and I took fifth. I was totally drained from the intensity of the race, but ready to try it again. I'm still not sure, though, if I'll continue on with racing after today. It's fun, but really exhausting, intense, and stressful. We'll see how the next couple of races go. RACE TWO
I get a better start this time, although I bog a bit. Again, the first turn is crazy intense and just full of bikes all vying for the same bit of real estate. I again sneak up the inside, but a little more aggressively this time. I'm feeling really comfortable going fast on the bike, and I start picking riders off, one by one. The expert guys are long gone, but I'm feeling like I'm going about as fast as I'm comfortable, wondering what's going on behind me. I wind up getting passed by two guys just slightly faster than me, but I just tuck in behind them, trying to stay with them, and wondering if maybe they'll make a mistake that I can capitalize on. On the second-to-last lap, the guy immediately in front of me overreacts to a glitch by the guy in front of him, grabs too much front brake in a fast turn, and has a nasty lowside right in front of me! I hold my line and see him tumbling in the dirt in my peripheral vision. Not the sort of mistake I was thinking might happen, but a mistake nonetheless. We hold our positions, and I wind up taking seventh. I'm reasonably pleased with my progress, and learning! RACE THREE This time it's Novice GTO. Me on the 600, against all sorts of riders on all kinds of bikes, including a bunch of literbikes. I'm feeling pretty relaxed, now that I actually have a little racing experience. I've got a good grid position - row two on the outside. It's a big grid, with 29 crazy riders or so. Turn one should be fun. The flag flies, and off we go. The guy in front of me bogs pretty badly, and I go right by him. Out of my peripheral to the left, I see everyone braking for turn one way earlier than I like to, and so I think to myself, "Hey, if you guys don't want it, I'll take it!" I zoom into the corner, suddenly with quite a bit of room around me, and exit turn 1B with the holeshot! I'm leading the pack! It's kind of weird, actually. No one to chase, just out there riding. Of course I know that there are a whole pack of guys behind me, just waiting to pounce, but I figure I'm just going to try to run perfect laps (for me) and see what happens. Turn after turn goes by, and still no one has come past! At about the 3/4 point of the first lap, I see something terrible. The corner worker is waving the red flag! NOOOOOOO!!!!! : Why now?!!! My holeshot is wasted, as we have to leave the track and re-start, due to a big multi-bike wreck behind me. Oh well. At least I feel like I'm getting starts figured out a little better. Once the crash truck and ambulance are done on the track, we re-grid. The flag flies, and the guy in front of me not only bogs, but stalls and waves his hand as I fly by. But this time the other guys aren't slowing for turn one like they did the first time. Still, I don't back down, and wind up going past a couple of guys through turn one, exiting in third position. The guy out in front is flying, and I'm stuck in third behind a slower guy, keeping me from going after him. Finally I late-brake him into the Tooele turn, and get into second. I try to chase down the guy in first, but he's flying!
Around the final turn into the straight, I tuck in and pin it. My friends are signaling FASTER, FASTER!! I'm giving it all I've got. At the finish line I can see a guy on my left who almost caught me, but not quite. I take third for my first-ever podium!! As I leave the track I'm thinking, "Wow. I might need to do this again!"
There was even a video crew there, that got some great footage from my races. By clicking on the "Club Racing" link on this website: http://www.onthethrottle.com/v2/, you can see my first races. Look for a guy in red/white leathers with a checkered flag pattern, and white boots. PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS At this point I'm planning on going back for the next round. If I can get good starts I think it will be kind of fun, as I'd like to avoid the mayhem that went on behind me! I'm pleased with the fact that I passed more people than passed me, despite my starts not all being great. Race 1 - Grid position 6, finished 5th Lap times were really close on the RC and 600. I ran the same Michelin Power Race tire combo on both bikes, with a PR-C front and medium rear 190/55 on the RC, and a medium soft 190/55 on the 600. Best lap times: As a reference, the top pros in the "King of the Mountain" GTU (middleweight) class in the series, ran best lap times from 1:39 to 1:46. Times went from there up to about 2:00 for the slowest people in the various novice classes. I can certainly see that there are definitely guys out there that place a higher value on finishing first in motorcycle races than I do. I think I can still have fun under those circumstances, but we'll see. I'll take it one race at a time. |
In the morning practices, I was feeling good, riding smoothly, passing lots of people. As I'm about to go around a guy on the inside, all of a sudden a really fast (but reckless) guy goes by me on the inside, literally within inches of me, causing me to have to stand the bike up. He winds up going straight off the track into the dirt, and while I go out on the curbing trying to avoid him, I manage to keep it together.
This time it's the Amateur GTU. I'll be on the 600's against novices and experts. Sort of a middle range group. I've got an inside grid position on the third row of a grid of about 20.
My buddies are standing along the straight behind the wall, signaling when I've got a big lead on the guy behind me, or when I need to go faster! I'm turning some really fast laps, and feel like I'm riding at the edge of my (and my tires') abilities. On the second-to-last lap, one guy FLIES by me. Turns out he's running expert times, and almost gets the guy out in first.
Maybe the best part, was having my 24 year-old son Taylor there with me. He really got a kick out of seeing me racing, and hearing the announcer keep saying my name, describing the bold passing maneuvers I was making, and so on. That was pretty cool!