Utah SBA Master’s of the Mountains Round 7 2011
I just had to go back to Miller for this round; I mean really who can pass up the FULL track at Miller? 4.5 miles 23 turns, what’s not to love? I went out a day early this time so I could attend the track day on Friday, which just happened to also be my birthday. I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend my weekend. I needed Friday to get my act together, I spent most of the day working with Shorty, on drills. Some of which went well and others, let’s just say it made it very clear where I needed to focus.
Saturday with UTSBA is mostly practice with 1.5 hour endurance race at the end of the day. I got some help with dialing in the suspension on the A bike, after the major changes we’d made at Inde, I was feeling pretty comfortable on it, but just couldn’t pinpoint a couple of the things that were buggin’ me. So I had one of the guys who’s really good at dialing bikes in take it out. After a certain amount of ribbing about my gearing being way too short, I pulled out a different rear sprocket for it. Really I could have gone down about 4 more teeth, for that straight. The other thing he came up with was raising the rear about 3mm, to help get more heat into the front tire. Since he didn’t think that it was really biting enough. I took it out for the last two sessions like that; wow, what a difference. I was able to drop 4 more seconds off my times, that put me closer to where I wanted to be, but I really think I should have been faster then even that.
I had decided to not do the endurance race solo this year, actually I wasn’t going to do it at all, but I got talked into riding an SV for the LW GTU endurance race. I didn’t get any practice time on it before heading out there. Needless, to say it was a blast, even though I had to think too much about my shifting. Even though my street bike is still std shift, I really don’t like it when I race bikes that have a regular shift pattern; I’m way too comfortable with GP shift, it just makes sense for me on the track. After I got lapped by the only other NM racer there and missed shifted in the attitudes, I decided to call it a day. SVs really are hoot to ride and of course I was just as quick on it at the end as I had been on my own bike. Little did I know at that time… I was going to get credit for being on their championship team. How great, to get credit for that little bit, I rode.
Sunday brought on the sprint races and a whole bunch of new issues and problems for me. I let myself get talked into racing the B bike instead of the A bike. Which meant swapping wheels and sprockets between bikes, normally it’s not too big a deal, but I was having issues with my asthma that morning so things just didn’t go quickly or smoothly. Turns out that it also meant pulling the front fender off the B bike since it was rubbing on the tire. All of that was smoothest part of my morning. The bike really does handle well and aside from subtle differences, it rides like the A bike. I wasn’t quite as quick on it as I had been on the A bike, but I wasn’t far off. Since it’s been almost a year since I’d ridden it, I was quite pleased, however, that was short lived. When I got back in from practice one of the guys noticed that the right fork was leaking at the foot, of all places, right next to the brake pads…. So that meant swapping everything back to the A bike so that I could make my first race, which was in 30 minutes. It’s this kinda stress I could really do without on race days. Thanks to some great friends, it all happened and I made it out to girds for my first race of the day.
Being a visitor, riding a bike I hadn’t ridden yet that day, after swapping parts all around, and not having had time to check grids, meant I just gridded up at the very back for the first race and I continued to do that for the rest of the day, since the people I was there to race against where in the back too. Turns out that was likely one of the smartest things I did that day. The girds where a decent size, I was actually surprised that everyone made it through turn 1 in a controlled manner for the first race, that however only lasted until the 6th turn. When I got watch my dear friend get flung and then slide across the track. Since I was in the back part of the group, I didn’t have to do anything drastic to avoid him. It really did mess with my head though. I fell farther back until I saw that they’d removed him from the track and didn’t red flag the race. It’s really hard to race with people that you care a great deal about, not that I’m ever okay with watching people go down, but there is just something about it when, they are good friends.
As it turned out this day I had a front row seat for each of the wrecks and I’d venture to say just about all the guys who ran off the track in my races. For the Novice GTU race I got to see the two wrecks that stopped the race and resulted in the ambulance having to roll. Not really things that I enjoy watching. All things considered the day went really well and I continued to get quicker through out the day, so I’m pleased with the weekend. I would have love the weekend if I’d managed to be a great deal quicker and I know it’s there. I just haven’t been able to tap into it so much for the last part of this season. Life really needs to stop getting in the way of my fun.