Race Report

After what happened to me at Daytona, I was really looking forward to a second crack at it in Fontana. I ended up getting a pretty good chance at it, but that sort of got squashed too, at least not as bad this time.

Lack of track time seems to be the flavour of my season as far as AMA Nationals are concerned this year. One of my biggest concerns with the new rule changes and classes that the AMA have imposed for this year is the Supersport/Formula Extreme rule. You're not allowed to enter the same bike in both classes. I understand their reasoning (they don't want all the factory guys from entering their supersport bikes in FX for practice then not showing up for the race), but it really hurts the privateers. We hardly get any track time to set up the bikes. Every session out at Fontana I dropped between 0.8 and 1.5 seconds right up to and including the race (except for Sunday morning warm-up). We should be working on tenths of a second instead of changing sprockets by 2 or 3 teeth at the end of the weekend. Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut though, as most of the reason I switched from Superbike to Supersport was to minimize the burn-out factor. I'm definitely not getting that, but not getting what I need either....

By the time qualifying came around my times were good enough to put me in the "fast" qualifying group, and I ended up 26th on the grid.

The race started out fairly well. I moved up some positions right off the bat in turn one and held them. I was in a pretty good dice with Jason Perez and Danny Eslick until Pedro Valliente highsided immediately behind me causing a red flag. We had just enough time to throw a new rear wheel/tire combo on for the restart, not even enough time to wipe the sweat off my face (this is where it would be nice to have a real crew, instead of changing a wheel on my own in my leathers).

The restart was almost a replay of the first from my perspective. I was in a battle for 16th with the same two guys for a couple laps before Jason Perez rammed me from the inside coming into the left hand double horseshoe. The black marks left on me, the bike, and the track would never lend anyone to thinking that you could stay on two wheels after a collision like that. I had to lift the bike up to try to keep it upright and by the time the shove stopped I was pointed off the track. I had to go around a couple huge 20 foot displays before I could try to get it turned around and pointed back at the track. When I did that it was on top of this patch where a NASCAR must have unloaded a crankcase full of oil. It was all dark with a white grease-sweep outline. I was trying to gas it over top of that in first gear and got flicked out of the seat. My feet came off the pegs and everything, but I got back onto the track with my elbows straight out and right pissed off. There was no way I was going to catch up to my friend by now, but I managed to get back everyone else that passed me in the mean time.

In the end I crossed the line in 18th place, which doesn't sound very good to me, but given the circumstances, and what happened in Daytona, I was happy with the finish.

I want to give a special thanks to Pirelli tires and Maxima Racing Oils for looking after me so well. Everything I've got from them has performed flawlessly and makes two huge components of my racing effort things that I don't need to worry about.