Race Report

We were greeted with a dry, but cold track on Sunday morning for round 2 of the WMRC roadraces in Mission. I started getting my stuff all unpacked and prepped for the day of racing. It was looking to be a fairly well organized day. My help hadn’t shown up yet, but that’s OK, I’m used to taking care of myself a bit; or so I thought.

We’re working through the morning qualifiers and neither of my guy’s had shown up yet, but still no cause for concern because at this point they’ve got to be on the way……right. Well, at lunch time I decided to call my buddy Connor and I just got his voicemail: bad sign. No panic, but a hint of concern as I dial up my buddy Wayne. Much to my delight, he answered the phone, but was a little “under the weather” from the previous night’s festivities. Now, my boys deserve to be late or even miss events for sure, cause they’ve bailed me out of so many jams that the odd lapse of promptness is totally acceptable – but my morning was a little more busy than I expected. The morning’s are always the worst too, cause that’s when all the work really happens with the tire mounting and tech and registration and the whole package. We’ll just say I was relieved to see them roll up when they did! Despite the feverish wrenching, I managed to win both of my qualifiers.

The afternoon started on a bad note though. For some reason I just didn’t have my game face on for the first Superbike race of the afternoon. I think I was 4th or 5th into the first turn, but got myself into 3rd behind my two rivals right away. For some reason though when those guys turned it up I just started making a few mistakes. I fell back just enough to lose touch and made another couple mistakes trying extra hard, rushing some of the corner entries and whatnot. Sometimes you just have one of those days I guess. I ended up 3rd.

The 600 Supersport race went a little better for me, although I was still one position from where I wanted to be. I trailed along in 3rd for most of the race but on the back wheel of my competitors until moving into 2nd about a lap from the end or something like that. I wasn’t prepared to pull some of the manoeuvres on lapped traffic that the eventual winner was doing. A win at Mission isn’t exactly worth endangering the lives of unsuspecting backmarkers as far as I’m concerned. There was some pretty rude stuff going on in that race in front of me, and it doesn’t need to be like that. Sometimes it’s important to keep perspective I suppose, and some people maybe lack that ability at times.

The Open Supersport race went more along the lines of how I like things to work. I followed the leader until just past the halfway mark before moving into the lead. I immediately put my head down for a couple strong laps following that to attempt to break away. It worked, and I was able to win by a very safe margin.

The last Superbike race of the day was a little disappointing. I again moved myself into the lead after a short bit of the race, and stretched out about a 1 second lead that I held for almost the whole race. I’m not sure if some of my extra hard riding while trying to overcome my mistakes from earlier in the day or not was wearing on me, but I just became quite fatigued with approximately 4 laps to go. I let my lead be whittled away as we worked our way through traffic until I had to pass a lapper going into a braking section coming off the back straight on the last lap. I had to go inside to make the pass, but the problem in that turn is that is where the motocross guys cross the track to get from the moto track to their pits and there’s dirt all over the track except for on the racing line. I got off into that stuff and the front locked up. I felt the bars turn as the front wheel stood still and had to let go of the brake in order for it to come back to me. I saved it, but was unable to hold my line, and blew past the apex trying to keep in on the asphalt. That allowed my competitor to come by on the inside and I ended up in second. That’s a pretty crappy way to loose a race, but I can tell you now that this is the kind of stuff that makes me stronger. Next time out you can bet on who is going to be ‘strong like bull’ for the last couple laps of the race!