Race Report

Laguna, Laguna, Laguna. What a crazy, hectic, no-track-time weekend. First off I want to give my respect to fellow racer Jamie Bowman that was killed on the weekend. It's humbling to have a reminder like this of just how dangerous our sport can be. It's a tragedy but for someone like Bowman, he went out in style. They say a racer is only as good as his last race, and he won his. Hats off to Jamie.

My weekend had its ups and downs. I had a couple little practice mishaps that set me back some all-too-limited-to-begin-with track time. Qualifying went not too bad. I was slotted 22nd in 750SS on the 5th row and 18th in 600SS on the 4th row with the row ahead of me made up of Richie Alexander, Vincent Haskovec, Brian Parriott and Roger Lee Hayden. Pretty fast company. Unfortunately, almost everything went wrong in the 600 race. My ride height in the rear was too low, that created some scary wiggles over the 140mph turn 1 crest. Between that and some fading brake pads the bike just basically beat me up and all I could manage was to stay out there and ended up 21st. I'm really disappointed with that finish but at least I feel I did the best I could given the conditions.

The 750 race turned out to be much better. After qualifying 22nd, getting a bummer start and working my way through the pack I found myself in a 3 way battle for 10th. I caught up to one guy on a new GSXR 750 and was getting held up a bit. One lap I was behind him in turn 6 and almost ran into the back of him. He was practically parking it in the middle of the turn. I thought for the next lap I'd back it up a bit, get a run on him, carry momentum up the hill and get him on the brakes for the corkscrew. Well everything went rotten cause I didn't back it up enough, threw it into the turn with tons of speed (way more than him), tried to slow it down but the front wanted to tuck, just touched his back wheel and the front crossed up. Down I went.

I'm not entirely disappointed with the weekend. Last year the quickest time I turned was a 1:37.2 in 750 qualifying. This year I qualified with a 35.5, ran 35 flats in the 600 race and 33.5's in the 750 race. Laguna, look out next year.