Race Report

What a bitter/sweet weekend. Man, did I ever go through a lot of ups and downs and mini tragedies and successes. I'd like to start out with thanking all of the people that support me in my racing adventures. There's nothing like seeing the happy faces of the people that really care about how your racing goes when you're in the middle of victory celebrations, even if they sometimes turn bitter-sweet.

This weekend I was competing in the Formula USA Sportbike class. Practice and qualifying went mediocre for me. My qualifying time was a little poor (1:11.7), putting me in 16th (or something like that) and on the fourth row. I was OK with that though because I knew what I could do during the race. I never really seem to qualify as good as I do in the races anyway. I think subconsciously it seems silly to me to risk bike, life, and limb just to post a fast time when the race is what really matters anyways.

So Sunday morning, raceday, morning warm-up. Some nice guy finds a way to severely oil the track in the middle of a fourth gear turn. Me and about 10 or 12 other bikes pile it up and my bike is TWISTED. There's no way to get it ready to rip before the race so we start decking out the B-bike with the good tires and whatnot. Time is tight and we didn't have time to put the B-bike on the dyno to make sure it made less that 106 horsepower (the class limit) or that it weighed more than 380 pounds (the class minimum). Since it was the weaker of the two bikes previously and the other bike dynoed at 103.7 hp I wasn't too worried about the power, as for the weight, we just dumped in a ton of gas.

The green flag drops and the race is on. I get a piss poor start (to match my piss poor grid position) and start working my way through the field. I'm clueless as to what position I'm in or what lap it is because of all the bikes on the track. I know I'm only going towards the front though cause nobody is passing me and it feels like everyone else on the track is going backwards. It's late in the race and I spot Dave Cook dicing with Joe Prussiano up ahead. I knew there couldn't be too many laps to go so I put me head down and went for it. I ripped off a string of low 1:10 laps, and second lap from the end I pulled off a 1:09.8, decimating any previous 600 lap record at PIR. I caught up with Dave and Joe on the last lap, draft-passed Joe on the front straight and got Dave on the brakes into turn 7. In all the excitement I missed the white flag and was pissed to see the checkered cause the Valvoline bike was now only about a half second ahead of me. I wish that race could have gone on all day long cause I felt so strong. 2nd place! I had no clue!

Next thing you know the FUSA guys snatch my bike up for testing and I'm wisked off to the podium for celebrations. Hold up the trophies, wear the hats, spray down the girls with booze, all that good stuff. The bike passes the weight check but when they dyno it, it reads 106.1 hp on about the 7th run. Just like that, they strip away what they can, the money, the trophy. But you know, I didn't pass those guys cause of that .1 of a horsepower, and everyone that matters knows that. They can't take away my pride. It's debatable if the dyno results were accurate as 3 of the top 5 finishers were disqualified for horsepower. I'm sure more of the guys were over the limit and probably would have been DQ'd but they only test the top 5. Some people were moved up a bunch of positions but they were over 7 seconds back at the flag. Strange race, pity it was decided the way it was.

Gather up my stuff, put all that excitement behind me, and I'm off to Colorado and Pikes Peak for the AMA National next weekend.