Race Report

Road America is such my favourite track. My second favourite just doesn't compare. For three and a half days I took every track session right to the chequered flag with a big grin on my face. Unfortunately I couldn't keep grinning between the 3.5 and 4.0 day mark.

We got to the track on Wednesday morning, then waited for pretty much the entire day for them to park us in the paddock. You see, there was a Yamaha factory transporter with no driver in sight that hadn't been placed in the paddock. Rather than inconvenience them, they decided to leave about 30 privateer rigs waiting in a parking lot for 5 hours until buddy showed up. That was really cool, and also my one token sarcastic bitch ...

We had a promoter practice on the Thursday. It was great to get the quality track time for a change. Since I've only been doing the one class at the nationals, lack of track time has been one of my biggest problems this year. Official practice started up on Friday, and my times were solid around the 15th to 19th position in 600 Supersport. There were only about 3 guys that weren't factory supported riders in front of me, so I felt good about how the weekend was starting.

Saturday we had a little more practice in the morning. That again went fairly well. And on Saturday afternoon I dropped some more time to put me on the 5th row out of 10 or 11.

Sunday morning warm-up went well enough. My times were stronger again compared to everyone else and I was feeling great about the main event coming up.

After thrashing around the track for most of four days, using up stacks of race tires and barrels of race fuel, I'm so excited to finally get a chance to do my thing for the 10 important laps I've been working towards the whole time. The bike’s been cleaned, the best race fuel in it, brand new tires, fresh brakes ... the works.

I get a decent launch off the line and start making ground on some of my surrounding riders down the stretch to turn one. I was set up on the inside and couldn't see the brake markers which were on the other side of the track. I basically just waited for everyone else to hit the brakes and blasted by a ton of guys into the first turn. I sort of counter acted that a bit going into the second braking section and lost a couple positions. After the first couple corners everyone got going single file and I put my head down to get to work. I was right on the heels of the fastest non-factory guys going into turn one with a head of steam for the first time when my bike popped into a neutral. I played with the shifter trying to get it into gear before it was time to start driving out, but that didn't work. After I clear the apex and I still can't accelerate I was forced to put my hand up (still working the shifter, but I wouldn't call it playing at this point). Basically all the gears are neutral and I coast to a stop, leaning my bike against the concrete wall. Turns out the nut holding the countershaft sprocket came off. The sprocket slipped off of the splines and just rested on the threaded portion of the shaft. I was not impressed, and that's the end of my race.

This is one of the toughest DNF's I've ever had to swallow. If only it could have happened on the last lap it would have given me a chance to do my thing for a while. All I wanted to do was hop on a bike and race it SO badly at that point. I eyed up Mike Sullivan's superbike after my race, but didn't think he’d like me hijacking his machine. Seibkens resort on Sunday night was a very drunkenly fun time. No details to report there though – you had to be there (Chuck, you should have come). It made for a very hung over flight home the next day with no sleep. Thank you, Justin and Brad, for hauling my polluted ass back to Milwaukie in your rental car. Thanks for all the Jaeger/Redbull's too! I'm almost recovered now – 4 days later.

I'm getting all patriotic for my next event – the Canadian Nationals in Calgary Alberta. Normally I hate the place, as it's full of skitter bumps, but my R6 tracks so well over rough terrain I almost want to moto it.

Special thanks to Chris Jensen of SBS brakes/Ohlins/Parts Unlimited. It is with regret that I leave the EBC family that is parented by Garry Gallagher – he's been very good to me. We'll be friends for a long time still though (Seibkens wasn't the same without you, buddy). The SBS brakes just have such amazing all out stopping power with a very light initial touch, no brake drag, and minimal rotor wear. They're a carbon style pad that is second to none. Come ask me about them in the pits sometime.

All the best everyone, till next time ...