Race Report

I’m finding the life of being a home-owner to be quite a bit more of a time commitment than I had originally intended. I’m not complaining, because my life has taken a lot of interesting turns and changes in the last year, and I feel as though I’ve come out in excellent shape – just with very little time to spare. Yes, it is my excuse for my tardy race reports, but as long as I keep winning races I seem to be forgiven…

The OMRRA season is starting out well enough. We’re two race weekends into the schedule and I’m currently leading the points again. Regardless of my existing lead, I’m not happy with the results of the year so far. I’ve been winning, but the pace of the lead group is slow beyond excuses. Given the current technology in tires and machinery I should be a full second faster per lap on both the 600 and 750. Regardless of what my competitors do, I will not be satisfied until I reach my objectives. I’ve been evaluating my current racing mentality over the past couple of weeks, and look forward to hitting the track again soon down there. I know what I’m going to do. Whether there’s a race for the lead or not is going to depend on what my competitors counter with I suppose. It might be interesting.

The 600 Supersport race was really cool. It started out wet (and the leaders all started with wet tires), but the track was drying quickly and soon it became a game of who could remember what portions of what turns had dry sections of pavement that could be used to catch slides. Pretty fun stuff. A fellow Pirelli rider took off into the lead early in the race when the track was the most wet and never looked back. I took my time feeling out the surface before moving forward from a distant 4th to 2nd and leaving all the Dunlop riders far behind to battle for 3rd. I set the fastest lap of the race on the drying track, but well back of the leader.

The 750 Supersport race had little drama. I took the lead into the first turn, led all of the laps, and won the race.

I was not pleased with the results of the 600 Superbike race. I finished 3rd, was put into a very dangerous situation from an unsportsmanlike competitor, and had some atrocious luck with lappers in the last couple of laps. That’s all I have to say about that race.

The 750 Superbike race was a gong show that never got gonged. I led for 4 laps before a red flag was flown. It was the last race of the day, and instead of calling the race done (even though I was a couple hundred meters from the halfway flag), we were kept on the starting grid for 20 minutes or so before restarting the race. Regardless, after the restart, I again took the lead and eventually won the race.

The problems I’m currently evaluating actually came about after this race. My main competitor for the overall championship dropped out of the race a couple laps before the red flag. Although he did not complete all the laps the club let him restart the race from his original grid position with the personal re-assurance by an official to me that he was indeed 2 laps down. I raced accordingly, and had no intentions of countering had I been passed for the lead. It seems that after the race, instead of scoring the event as was confirmed on the start grid at the time, the club has decided to rewrite the rule book to allow him to be scored in second place, unfairly maintaining his chances for points in that class. If this was an isolated occurrence I could overlook it as being unbiased, however this is the second time this year that the club has changed the rulebook to allow this particular competitor to retain finishing positions that were not rightfully earned. First there was a pass under a waving yellow that the rule book is written to have handed a DQ as a result – that was ignored. Now apparently not even all the laps of the race need to be completed to ensure a top two finish. To make matters worse, I had to generate a petition signed by half of the grid to re-instate an obvious honestly earned 2nd place finish just because I forgot to switch my transponder to that bike on the first day we required them ever.

I enjoy racing at Portland, and plan to continue doing so. I have a tremendous amount of great memories of times past from racing there. The club has historically been the best run of any club I’ve raced with (and I’ve raced with a lot), but the current trend of biased favouritism is absurd. I consider my competitor a friend, and that is more important to me than anything within the control of the club. I want to make it clear that I really like Chris, we’ve known each other for years, and I can guarantee that he’s as stand-up of an honest guy as they come. My beef really has nothing to do with him whatsoever. The fact is that there is no place for favouritism regardless of the “local-boy that’s never won the championship vs. the foreigner that’s won lots” factor in any kind of racing environment. I’m totally disgusted with the actions of the club, plan to win the championship out of spite, and am returning the championship trophy. I’m just not interested in having it at my house. If any of my sponsors would like it to display at their shops or homes or wherever, please contact me prior to the OMRRA race on June 24th otherwise it goes back where it came from. Then they can just give it to whoever they want right now.

Thank you to all of my supporters, and I look forward to some good times in less than two weeks when we’re back down in Portland.