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Inside Line Motorcycle Racing | |
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Repairing the bodywork (damaged in February), painting, and mounting my new Sharkskinz lower fairing all took a lot more time than I had imagined. I also had to sand and paint the used Kerker header and mid pipe I bought from Scott Soper and manufacture a mounting bracket for the new muffler. A few weekends in Feb. and March when I said, "Well, the weather is nice -- I'll get to that later." all caught up with me in April. A couple weeks of late nights after work and two long weekends found me frantically finishing the last bit of safety wiring on Friday morning before an afternoon practice.
It was great to see all the familiar faces among the volunteers and racers at the track. After some chatting, I took the "serious racer" plunge and bought a 15 gallon drum of the foul-smelling Nutec leaded race gas. I mix this 1:3 with pump gas. The lead is supposed to help preserve the somewhat delicate intake valves in the FZR 400 and, of course, race gas is supposed to make the bike faster!
We only got two 20-minute practice sessions, but one was enough to tell me that my bike is geared way too low for PIR. For those familiar with the track, I was hitting the 14,000RPM red-line in 6th gear just before the "Festival Curve" turn-off. This left me with several hundred yards to study the tachometer before arriving at the brake markers at the end of the front straight.
Other than the gearing, the bike was fun to ride and seemed to handle fairly well. It's probably for the best that I don't know what kind of lap times I was turning, because it was going to take a while to "get back up to speed."
I also found out that the FZR sucks down more gas than I expected. Just as I passed the checkered flag that indicates that 'practice is over', the bike started stalling. I made it down to the corner workers at the end of the straight and opened up the tank -- bone dry. I got to ride back to the pits in the crash truck. Don "Blinky" Schmidt told me about his cool trip to London on the way back to the pits.
I called around looking for replacement sprockets and found that Dr. Brown's had a few. After practice, I stopped by and Gene found 41 and 44-tooth replacements for my 45-tooth rear sprocket. Switching to a 41 would make a big difference in the gearing, but I figured that 44 probably would not make enough difference.
Then back home for a quick dinner before rushing off to go watch the one-act play that a friend wrote.
I tried to get to the track early so I could get the sprocket changed. The sprocket went on easily, but now the chain was very nearly too long for the swingarm! With the chain adjusters only one turn from their max, the chain seemed to be about right.
I got it all back together in time for the first practice session, but the bike's battery seemed to have gone almost flat when I tried to start it, and it wouldn't catch at all. Gustavo helped me hook it up to his battery charger as the session started. After getting impatient with the charger, we jump-started it from the truck. That worked, and got me out for the last 8 or 9 minutes of the session.
The three or four laps I got was enough to tell that now the bike was geared a little too high, but the 41-tooth sprocket is not far off. A 42 would probably be just right. The bike started fine for the second morning session, and now I was getting into turn one faster, and things were starting to feel generally a bit faster, but the bike was feeling odd. It kind of bounced and wobbled around going down the front and back straights. I took the bike over to the Circuit1 guys after lunch and asked if they had any suggestions. They dialed up some rebound in the shock (it was apparently at the minimum setting) and told me to loosen the chain. Luckily there was still that final turn of adjustment left in the chain adjusters! That made the bouncing go away -- thanks, Circuit1 guys!
OMRRA had their DBCom system set up during the all the practice sessions that day (thanks, Shonna!), so I could see that my lap times were slowly dropping. On the last session I got some good gaps of clear track and things finally started coming together. I got a string of 1:22 to 1:24 times that let me know that I should be able to be competitive in 450SS. I left the track feeling pretty good, but the last session seemed to be my limit, as I suddenly felt completely drained.
Back at home, Julie made latkes and I grilled a steak. We watched some TV while eating dinner. It seemed to be a relaxing evening to match my exhausted state. But just after we finished dinner, my dad called to tell me that my grandmother, who had been suffering some complications from having her pace-maker replaced with a combination de-fibrillator/pace-maker early in the week, had died that morning. Sad news, as she was a truly wonderful and energetic person. [I've tried a few times to try to write some sentences about her inquisitive nature and "seize the day" attitude, and how I've tried to relate that to motorcycle racing, but they never came out right.]
At the bike inspection in the morning, the inspector and I discovered that the master link clip had fallen off at some point Saturday, leaving behind the safety wire and "goop" that are supposed to help keep it on. Scary! (Having your chain come apart while riding is very dangerous.)
Martin Buehler and Les Green helped me install a new master link and clip that Tom Young's new company (I've forgotten the new name) conveniently had for sale at the track.
That was finished just in time to take the bike out for a short 4-lap practice. It was a bit cooler today, and I had even collected some mist on the windshield on the way to the track, so I took it pretty easy on the cold, slightly damp track.
Shortly afterwards, it was time for the 450SS heat race. The heat races are 4-lap races that determine the starting grid position for the 10-lap main races. On the way out to the starting grid, the oil level warning light came on, but then went out a couple times. I watched it during the tire-warming lap and it never came on again, so, with some trepidation, I decided to go ahead and run the race.
My first start on the FZR was not bad, but not too good, either. I rounded turn one somewhere in the middle of the 12 bikes in the class, and made up a few positions in the first couple turns, and passed Steve Supple on the single super-motard entry in turn 9.
At the end of the front straight, I caught up with the next bike in front of me, just as he was catching up with a novice on an SV or Open Classic Superbike. There was a waving yellow flag in turn one, which means "caution, incident ahead, no passing". This novice apparently thought it also meant "slow down at least 15mph" and I had to slow down hard. I knew this would mean that Steve and anyone else close behind would pack up behind me. We slowly rounded turn two and saw a bike off in the grass. As we passed it, we were back to racing.
I started turning left into turn 3 and felt something hit my back tire. I straightened the bike back up just as Steve went by on my left headed straight off the track. Since I couldn't turn left with him there, I followed him straight off into the grass. After I carefully slowed down and got the bike turned in the damp grass (this is no trivial task on race tires) I looked back and saw that Dave McGrath's bike was down in the entrance to three. Then I took a look around at the back of my bike to make sure no parts were dangling or missing. Things looked OK, so I headed back onto the track.
Since I would be either last or next-to-last, and since I had been worried about the oil light anyway, I just exited the track and went back to the pits.
It turns out that while Steve and I were stacked up behind the novice, Dave McGrath had caught up and passed Steve on the inside of turn two, probably because we were going so slow. Since the waving yellow means no passing, Dave dropped back, trying to get back behind Steve. Apparently Steve was setting up for a very wide line through three and his rear tire met Dave's front tire, and Dave hit the pavement pretty hard, breaking a collar bone and getting his money's worth out of his helmet.
I discovered that it took about a third of a quart to restore the previous oil level.
The heat race for 450SB was much less dramatic. The three SV650 superbikes, which make 80-90HP to my FZR's 55-60HP, roared away and disappeared. I diced a little with Brent Pindle on his Aprilia 250, and ended in front of him.
After trying to get David McGrath to sit down and relax and let Julie & I pack up his bike and stuff, we ate lunch. David was understandably upset, and wasn't in the mood for help. In order to attract more competition to the 450SS class, he is providing a cash purse paying $60 for 1st down to $20 for 5th place for the 2002 season. All he requests is that racers run "Team Fight Against Tobacco" stickers on their bikes. So, after a winter of carefully preparing his bike and promoting the class, his broken collarbone means he will miss at least a couple months of racing.
Julie had to go to a rehearsal that started at 2:00, so she was not able to see either of the "main" races.
In the 450 SuperSport main race I was gridded at the far right of the second (and last) row due to my DNF in the heat. But I got a good start, and ended up among the first row riders right away, and motored past everyone except Scott Soper and Jim Kennedy on the straight. Scott seemed to have at least a second a lap on Jim and I, but we had more to worry about as we caught up with lagging novices on SV's on the second lap. I dropped behind Jim a few times as we made our way through what seemed like a lot of fairly evenly spaced traffic, but I was able to catch back up again. Scott was still in sight, but my hopes of catching him dwindled with every SV and classic superbike we made our way around. SV's and most of the Open Classic SuperBikes are faster than the FZR's on the straight, so it was challenging to get around many of them. We lapped Gustavo Buhacoff and some of the other 450SS entries on laps 8 and 9. It was on turn 9 of lap 9 that Jim got blocked trying to get around someone. I got a good drive out of 9 and passed Jim on the exit. I had a worried moment in turn two when I was slowed by another rider, but he blew three and went wide. I charged inside, knowing that Jim would probably be right behind me. I guess he wasn't, but I ran through the rest of the corners to the checkered flag like he was! Second place!
I was very happy to get 2nd in my first race on the new bike, and dicing with all the traffic from the other waves had made it quite an exciting race. This is what makes all the money and time spent prepping the bike worth it!
The 450 SuperBike race was a bit of a let-down after the SuperSport race. As expected, the three fast SuperBike SV's disappeared quickly, but I never saw any of the other entries in the 450 class. In fact, I had 4 laps of "clear track" followed by 6 laps with sparse traffic. The DBCom showed later that I got my best lap time yet (on this bike) during this race, but after a pretty big slide in turn four, I kept feeling like I was getting that turn wrong.
After the race, Martin bought one of our ramps, helping to support the Inside Line race team.
I won $40 in the Team Fight Against Tobacco 450 SuperSport class sponsorship -- thanks, Dave!
Thanks to all the OMRRA turn workers, registration folks, and other volunteers who make OMRRA race days possible. Special thanks to Shonna, our new DBCom volunteer, and Don Schmidt, the crash truck driver.
Thanks to Gene Brown at Dr. Browns for finding some sprockets on short notice. Thanks also to my sponsors Bridgestone Tires and Lockhart-Philips USA.
My best and most special sponsor is my wife, Julie!
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