Race Report

Sometimes it takes a great deal of personal motivation to write these race reports. Don't get me wrong, most times I love it, but when you just want to forget about a weekend and move on, the last thing you want to deal with is summarizing it all for everyone to hear about how crappy of a time you had.

Most of the weekend went really well, right up until the time when things actually mattered. Friday morning I got going breaking in the new motor and learning the track. Things went pretty smooth as my times dropped all day. Before the Superstock qualifying session I was just railing, with times faster than the Arclight Racing team members and most all other Superstock riders. Come qualifying things got all messed up. There was a red flag part near the start of my qualifying session to deal with a horrible wreck, then the restarted session was pretty much run in the dark (or at least I wished I didn't have a tinted shield). I went a bunch slower than I did earlier and qualified on the 7th row.

Saturday morning was rained out, and we only got a very short practice session before the Superbike race to be held that afternoon. I was going to try out a new set of gloves for the Superbike race, and that turned out to be a mistake that would plague me for the rest of the weekend. I got a good start in the race and was running in around 11th or 12th position, easily able to stay with the two riders immediately ahead of me. I was thinking that it was going to be a great race between the three of us when the palm of the glove on my throttle hand began slipping, bunching up into my fingers. There are a couple spots on the track where it is required to forcefully steer the bike to the left while accelerating. I had to hold the right grip between the tip of my thumb and fingers and had to do all the steering with my left hand. I was getting killed in those sections of the track and went backwards fast. I struggled with the condition enough that my right arm pumped up rock solid, and I tore the skin right up and under the biggest frickin callous on my right hand. It hurt! We undertook some delicate super-glue surgery that night, coupled with some elaborate bandaging and figured we'd give it a go for Sunday.

Even after the problem that I had both in Daytona and the day before, I went into the 2nd Superbike race at Fontana in 8th place in the AMA Superbike points. This doesn't mean much to me as I only race in Superbike to try to pay the bills ... the Superstock race is what I'm there for. Because of the re-scheduling due to rain, Superstock was now planned to take place immediately following the Superbike race. I decided not to do the complete Superbike race to save my hand and arm for Superstock. I went out for the first few laps of Superbike to practice a start, blow some cobwebs out, and mentally prepare for Superstock. I pulled in on lap 3 as planned and the crew began getting me and the bike all set.

I got a decent start to the Superstock race and began a healthy charge forward. On lap 2 or 3 I moved ahead of Jason DiSalvo and started working on the gap to Brian Livengood. I felt strong and the bike was perfect until around lap 5 or 6 when my arm started acting up. I guess I must have damaged, or at least severely fatigued, it the previous day and the arm pump condition came back far worse than the day before. It got progressively worse and worse, with my times reflecting the condition. I could barely hang on through the fast left handers by the end and was simply in survival mode. I absolutely went backwards, giving up a total of 9 positions before the chequered flag. The results reflect my dismal day being credited for 24th. At one point I almost felt like I'd rather just grab a bunch of brake in the middle of a turn so I wouldn't have to keep going round and round watching a bunch of slow-pokes take me to the clinic worse and worse every lap. Incredibly frustrating!

I'm planning on a few measures to help the situation ... more on that later. I'm planning on attending a club race in a couple of weekends in Portland, then it's back down to California for the next AMA race where I hope to work my way out of the hole I've dug for myself in the first two races.