To start off, it was brutally cold all weekend. Friday night it was 18 degrees (and I was sleeping in a tent) so didn’t get much sleep.
Only did a half day of practice on Saturday as it was still cold all morning and I was running DOTs for practice. Respectable times and everyone seemed to be going just a little slower than usual.
Sunday morning was just as bad as Saturday except worse. A good wind was blowing across the track which isn’t fun at 140 in turn 8 as it tries to pick you up and toss you off the track. Still ran one practice (this time with the slicks on) and got some pretty good starting positions. (6th for the first race and 4th on the second).
1st race was Open Superbike and I was gridded 6th for it. Didn’t bother me as we were trying a new shifting scheme for turns 5, 6 and 7 so I didn’t expect to beat the class champions. The shift scheme worked alot better over turn 6 and thats when the fun started. Through turn 8 I could feel the rear hopping around. It was so bad I had to let off to get the bike to settle down. I wouldn’t of noticed it except we were going through turn 8 alot faster and the wind was gusting pretty hard. Could only manage a 5th place in the race.
Once I got back in the pits I told my crew chief (yes I have one) about the hopping and he slowed the rebound down by 4 clicks. My race was only 3 away from my first one so we didnt try anything else as that may have been worse.
Went out in Formula 40 gridded 4th and got a pretty good start. Wasn’t first but wasn’t last by any means. On the first flying lap going through turn 8 the hopping was gone and the bike was behaving nicely. Only problem was now the front was getting light over the bumps in the straights but that was ok, I can handle that. Alsop, on the first lap we managed to knock 3 seconds off our fastest lap so far. What was even better was that we knocked another second off on the next lap and the bike was feeling better and better. The next lap was slower however, I was dicing with a ZX10 and passed him for good on the exit of turn 9 on the outside. The drive out of 9 was fantastic. I actually thought he had let off until I saw the laptimes. Unfortunately there was a rider down in turn 3 so we only did 5 laps but it was a fun five laps at that.
Thanks to my sponsors – Torco lubricants (great oils!!!), HRS suspensions, MoPowerSports, Bridgestone, Tige at CM, Scorpion, TrackSkinz, Pitbull , SoCalTraackDays, SBKPaint and EBC