Race Report

Here we are again. The first schmidty report of the year, and it’s a doosey. Typically I give a short intro and get right into the racing…..this situation proves to be quite different. The intro is the story, the racing is the conclusion.

Due to a number of challenges, the 2008 Columbia River Motorsports GSXR 600 sat leaned on the kickstand at SDS Performance without a wrench turned on it other than to remove the OEM bodywork until days before the race. This thing is as STOCK as stock gets; horn, blinker switches, exhaust, passenger pegs…..the whole bit. I spend an entire day running around gathering parts from different sources. Some are there, many are not, I still don’t have the bike, and don’t get it until 10pm Wednesday night.

I forego riding completely on Thursday, and spend the entire day at GP Suspension stripping street parts off of the 600, drilling, wiring, mounting the odd chassis part that I have, etc. We put a shock in it, some GP valving for the forks, set it up with the ride height I had on the 750 and off we went.

Friday morning means the resumption of scrambling. Trying to bleed brakes, mount bodywork, install the Power Commander, etc. We get it all together and by around noon it’s time to head out for our maiden voyage. Well, it didn’t last long (9 miles in fact as evidenced by the odometer, and there was probably some miles on it from the factory…..). The brakelines had quite a bit of slack in them, and I guess the wind blew the one line into the tire a bit, sucked it up under the fender, and when I applied the front brake and the front end dove the tire grabbed the line, tore it out of the caliper and now I have no brakes…………. at the end of the straightaway………… probably going a buck thirty or so…………….. good thing I was still breaking in the motor.

Quickly I’m processing the situation as I leave the asphalt into the muddy grass, headed for the wall at an alarming rate. It didn’t take much to figure out I was going to lose much more speed on the ground than if I stayed on the tires, so I stood on the rear brake and kept leaning it until I was on the ground. Tumble, flip, stop short of the wall. Now I’m pissed, but at least un-hurt aside from a few twists and such. I hadn’t even leaned on this bike yet. I was short shifting it all along not even winding it out. Not trying, not pushing, yet still end up in the lawn. Well, no point crying about it. I went out on the 750 once to at least remind myself of where the track goes, gathered up the bike at the end of the day, and started bolting spares to it. Just in case I didn’t have enough stress and things to worry about, it’s also the “my parents meet Christi’s (my girlfriend) parents” night for dinner! I slept well.

Saturday went smoothly. I rode the 600 all day trying to get acclimated to it. It had an incredible flat spot in the power at 10,000rpm that I kept trying to tune out all day. We added more and more fuel there, but never got it all. I was just going to have to ride around it on Sunday.

So here I am, in true club-racer mode. Bone stock motor still with the oil in it that came from Japan, suspension upgraded, Power Commander installed, borrowed slip-on, primer bodywork, flat spot in the midrange.…let’s pour some VP MR11 in and see what we can do……..apparently this is the way we roll. It’s Sunday morning and we’re going to see green flags in about an hour.

The first race of the year for the entire club is 750 Supersport. I’m racing my 2007 GSXR 750 with a RPM Performance Ron Hopkins tuned motor because we still haven’t taken delivery of the 08, and it’s probably a good thing. I couldn’t have handled getting two bikes together at the same time. That would have killed me. They drop the flag, and I get the launch and the run into the turn on the brakes. With the new track layout there was quite a bit of concern as to how the pack would deal with the reconfigured turn 4 off the start as it is quite a bottleneck. I could care less. At this point holding the throttle open and spinning the rear tire off the turns is like de-stress therapy for me. I simply get on with it, blast a huge lead within a couple laps, and put it on cruise control for the remainder of the 12 laps to take home the win by about 13 seconds over second place.

600 Supersport is next, and the first chance we get to see what I can do on a stock motor against the best racers on their finely tuned and tested bikes. I know I’m going to have my work cut out for me, and only hope that I’m able to stay in the draft so that it comes down to riding (and not simply motor) at the end of the race. I brutalize the clutch to get the jump off the line, pound the bike on the brakes into turn 1 to secure the lead, and set about dragging parts and sliding tires in every effort to keep the pack behind me as long as possible. It was working. Good thing each straightaway immediately follows a series of turns, as I had the measure of the field everywhere the throttle wasn’t wide open! At about half distance I still didn’t know how my motor stood up against the rest as I’d led the entire way. I took a look back halfway down the straightaway and remember thinking “oh, I’ve got a pretty good lead” with second place back about 15 yards or so. I found out a moment later how my motor really stacked up when that same bike blew by me fast enough to suck the goggles off my face. We had some pretty interesting encounters with lapped traffic late in the race that I’m sure nobody will soon forget (especially the lappers!). At one point in the middle of a right turn Nathan Hester and I split a lapper with me on the inside and him on the outside with Nathan leading as we came out. The very next turn goes left and we crossed paths to again split another lapper only with me coming out in front. It was an insane dogfight that resulted in me crossing the line first with only a second to spare. I was incredibly relieved, and at this point would consider the day a success even if I didn’t finish the next 600 race.

The 750 Superbike race was a de-stresser for me as I knew my bike was competitive, and I had previously won so convincingly on it. I got the jump off the line, led into turn 1 and started clicking off laps. Although I had a large lead, instead of backing off I decided to keep pushing to ensure I wasn’t “practicing to be slow”. The race was shortened due to a fallen bike on the track. In 8 laps I had already stretched out a 14 second lead on second place! I kinda wish I could have seen what I could do in the next 4 laps….

The final event of the day for me was the second race on the not so virgin 600 again. I got the drop on the field off the line again, but immediately was under attack by the start of the second lap by the faster bikes. I’d get passed at the end of the straightaway, but was fast enough everywhere else to make up for it. Now that I’m spending time with a bike in front of me I can really see where the differences are. Even with the flat spot in the midrange I was driving out of the turns significantly faster than my competitors, which made up a lot for the lack in power. As soon as I realized my bike was capable of staying in the draft (so long as I practically put my front tire inside the tread of the bike in front of me) I knew the race was mine. By the time we were about ¾ distance in the race the bikes stopped coming past on the straightaway. I knew they’d still be right there, so kept pushing through the lappers best I could. I thought I’d take a look back when I saw them holding up the white ‘last lap’ flag to find out what kind of lap I was going to have to put in. I was relieved to see I didn’t have a number plate on my rear tire anyway – they were about a second back! I must have been doing something right. I brought it home for the win to end the day with incredible satisfaction.

If someone told me that I was going to go 4 for 4 while I was riding on the back of my buddy Sam’s bike after my ‘no brakes’ wreck on Friday I would have laughed at them. Despite all odds I found a way to pull it off. Thank goodness my motor won’t be stock for the next event cause I’d end up killing myself if I had to ride like that all year to win. I was using all the track and then some. I know I touched the wall driving out of the last turn a couple times, and spun the rear over the curbing out of turns almost every lap. One time I threw it into the 120 mph turn 7 with my rear wheel still in the air from being on the brakes. I didn’t even know it was up there until I let go of the brakes, it touched down, stepped out, and I flat tracked it sideways for about 100 feet through the turn until I was on top of the curb for turn 8 changing the bike’s direction pushing so hard on the pegs/bars my outside foot was coming off….all while jumping it over the gator bumps, just to have it snap sideways the other way as I bent it over to finish the turn on the gas for turn 8. On the next lap through I couldn’t help but admire the long black banana I’d just painted outlining my race line. I’m still considering both my 600 races as possessed out of body experiences.

For this event it is more than fitting that I thank the people that went out of their way to help me. First off, thanks to Dave and Ben over at GP Suspension for letting me set up shop and twirl/throw wrenches for a day. Not only that, but for making time to ensure the chassis handled as good as I’m used to, and the way I needed it so I could ride it the way I needed to. The guys at GPR pulled one out of the hat to get me product in the 11th hour. Thank you guys, cause I know I put my GPR stabilizer through the paces more than once on Sunday! Zero Gravity, Suomy, Ogio, Orca Bay Suzuki, Columbia River Motorsports and Pazzo Racing were good to me, getting product when and where they said they would. The guys at Dynojet Research worked with me through the week to get proper software and maps to help best they could with my situation. A special thanks to Darrell from Columbia River Motorsports for having such a cool head, and not panicking when he saw his brand new 2008 Suzuki GSXR600 with 9 miles on it, crashed bodywork, and a flattened tank! Thanks to Sage from SDS Performance for working with me to get the Dynojet stuff working, and Tyson from Cascade Tracktime for being there if I needed him and allowing me track time to get my bike crashed with. Thanks to Bryan Rothenburger and Simone-Pierre Smith for both offering up spare exhaust systems to use on the 600. Thanks to my buddy Aaron for wrenching on my stuff all weekend despite having wrecked his bike just a couple days prior. And finally thanks to Christi for being so patient and looking after me to ensure I had food and whatever else I needed when it was the last thing on my mind.

Well team, we’re off to a good start, and I’m now positive I didn’t get slow over the off-season. If Sunday is any indication I’m pretty sure my competitors are going to have some work cut out for them once we get the 600 some horsepower and a linear power curve.

Stay tuned for my next adventure in a couple weeks at the also newly reconfigured Mission Raceway Park in B.C. Canada.