Race Report

I’ve had some fairly bad luck in years past at the Calgary track. I’m not sure what it is with me and Alberta. We don’t really get along that well. Montana’s sort of the same way with me. Being the eternal optimist, I’m always expecting every year to be the one where it turns around for me. Is this the year? Hummmmm?

The Calgary track is a bit of an eye opener compared to everywhere else I’m used to racing. The surface is so bumpy that you don’t have to bring the chassis back after a bump in this turn or a bump two turns later, you have to work with the chassis always in a state of flex going over ‘series’ of bumps in every corner. I bet the fluid gets a work-out there. I know my legs did on Blitzkrieg. It’s work trying to hang onto that bike in the first place, but having to keep your weight off the seat the whole time and deal with the acceleration keeps it even more demanding – but fun.

Practice and qualifying went not so bad. The weather was always on the questionable side, and between the two bikes I sure did a lot of riding. After my long break I was a bit out of shape, and that was starting to show itself (I hate to admit). My times were decent, but still allowed plenty of room for improvement.

The first race was a 600 battle. I got an atrocious start. I have no idea what went wrong off the line, but obviously more things to me than my competitors. There’s a long straightaway, and they have a 115hp limit in that class (that my bike’s obviously nowhere near). Between the two of those conditions I just watched bikes ride around me the whole run to turn one. I sliced through traffic all race and actually ended up having a pretty good ride despite being so significantly down on power and with a poor start. I finished 11th.

The superbike race was starting out to be a good one. I went back and forth with Matt McBride for a couple laps until around lap 3 or 4 when he punted me off of turn one. He swiped my inside handlebar forwards very late in the corner entry. I didn’t have a chance, was on the ground before I knew it, and not very impressed about it. They mow the grass outside that turn for about 30 feet or so, but after that it’s about mid-thigh high (even for a normal sized guy) and soaking wet. It was a very interesting sensation going into that deep, thick, heavy grass at about 110mph. I thought of myself as one of those bullets that they shoot into that gel stuff to test ballistics and bullet deformity. Thankfully my bullet didn’t get too deformed.

We worked on the bike for hours trying to scrounge parts, straighten stuff out, and duct tape and wire things back into their relative positions that night. The next morning during our 40 minute practice session I didn’t even get one flying lap on the bike though, cause of everything that was still wrong with it. Someone didn’t tighten the handlebar clamp and the bar twisted on me the first time I applied pressure on it, came in, fixed it. The exhaust bracket broke next lap out, came in, fixed it. The bracket that holds the tail section on broke the next lap out, came in, fixed it. Now there was three minutes left in the session and just as I’m doing my shoulder check to merge with traffic I see the red flags. Party’s over. Back to the pit.

The second 600 race went pretty good for me actually. I got a much better start, and was in a decent battle for 10th and 11th for much of the race. I was getting visually destroyed on the straightaway and had to work my nuts off for the rest of the track to try to gap the guys I was battling with before the straight every lap. They’d bring me back and blow by so fast that I swear they almost sucked my goggles off. I couldn’t hold onto it by the end, and conceded to finish in 13th. I rode really well though, and did the best that I could considering it all. Thankfully the chassis on the Suzuki worked well enough to allow me to finish as well as I did.

The last Superbike race of the day was a let down for sure. After running so strong in the first one, I had high hopes of being able to get a decent finish out of the weekend on the big bike. I knew I had my work cut out for me considering I didn’t get a chance to even really ride it before the race because of everything that was wrong with it. I was actually even just hopeful that we had got everything! My start wasn’t that great, and my race went even worse. I can’t say that I felt the front end being wrong, but I definitely didn’t trust it all race for some reason. Also it was squeaking really bad when leaned over in a couple parts of the track too that I couldn’t figure out. I ended up 14th, and not happy about it at all. When we were packing up the gear a wheel spacer turned up that shouldn’t. I looked at the bike and sure enough, one of my guys put the front wheel on without the spacer. Not only could the wheel slop back and forth quite a bit, but the forks were pinched together at the bottom, affecting the suspension movement. The squeaking was the disk rubbing against the inside of the caliper while leaned over. Not too cool.

Respect to my main man Trevor Beckman from Flexi-Glass bodywork. He’s seen so much of Blitzkrieg’s trashed out fibreglass this year it’s surprising he still answers the phone when I call. Trev, you rock the block. PSI leathers are looking after me. Although we had some fitment problems earlier this year, my new flashy leathers are all primed up for me to debut at Portland this weekend. These are seriously high quality items, and I encourage you to come by, say hi, and check them out. You won’t miss me – I’m the beaming yellow Photon ray out there! I’ve got some fresh new Oxtar boots and Held gloves to flash around with too, so I’m going to look like a catalogue model this weekend. All top quality stuff. I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks for giving a poop.