Race Report

What a whirlwind road trip. It doesn't seem to matter how long you're actually at your destination, if it takes you twice that long to get there and back, it's still a whirlwind trip. Some of my more memorable experiences of the trip are of driving in the middle of the night (for the second in a row) all hopped up on whatever the gas station had that might keep me awake. Roasted cashews, Pepsi and M&M's seemed to work best on me. My partner Matt went for the Red Bull routine, but come Idaho he pooped out, so I recommend the Pepsi deal.

I've got mixed emotions about the weekend. The 750 Supersport race is the one that really mattered to me, but I had some terrible luck in it, so overall it seems my feelings follow the result of that race. I ran out of gas with 2 laps to go in the first Superbike race while running 19th. What else is there to say there, other than we had no time to do any fuel consumption tests and made a poor call. There was also a red flag and subsequent warm-up lap that we didn't plan for.

In 750 Supersport I got shuffled back off of the start because I got choked off the side of the track part way down the straight. I had to roll out of the throttle to get around the other side of a guy which was disastrous, and it only got worse from there. Coming down the hill on the brakes for turn 3 on the first lap everyone around me hit the brakes way too early. I was committed with my speed and collided with the guy in front of me. So, I've hit this guy and now I'm shoving him along faster than he probable wants to be, when as I bounce off of him I get together with the guy to the right of him and some part of that guys bike or body rips my right arm behind my back. Keep in mind that at this point I was trying to stop the thing as best I could, and now the hand that was on the brake is behind me! Somehow I manage to get my hand back to the brake in time to keep it on the pavement. It must have cost me about 25 positions, it was disastrous. I managed to reel back all of the guys that I was going to finish in front of for sure anyway, but once I got ahead of them, the 6 or 7 guys I would have been racing with were up ahead by too far for me to do anything about it. I finished 11th.

The second Superbike race was soaked to the core. It rained so hard before the race that you could do nothing other than laugh at the idea of going superbike racing in it. My mentality at this point was to try to salvage something out of the weekend. The fact that this would be the third race day on my now skinny-treaded rain tires was forcing me to have a "take it easy" attitude as well. I thought that if I could stay on two wheels there would be a lot of attrition, and my plan worked out. Everyone took turns crashing (some didn't even wait their turn, like Jamie Hacking) and that left a lot of open track in front of me. At the end of the day, I ended up 14th with a bike that's still straight, which is a lot better than the stack of Kurtis Roberts' crashed out bodywork laying next to the dumpster as we drove out of the pits. So I guess I'm OK with that.

Things just haven't been going my way in 750 Supersport this year since Daytona. Between that, and the realization that my 10th place spot in the points is almost surely in jeopardy this weekend as I won't be able to make it to Loudon, I'm really looking forward to things turning around. My riding has been very strong all along, I just hope that luck lets that show up in the results before everyone stops paying attention to what I'm up to. I've got a couple weeks off to thrash on my dirtbike before the heart and soul of my race season begins at the end of the month. I'm doing 4 national races in 5 weekends with a XR100 Grand National thrown in there to keep it interesting. Hope to see you there ....