![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.diomederacing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2012\/05\/2012-04-08_10-41-24_442-300x169.jpg\" "\\"New")
<\/p>\nEven though I did go to a race in March with ASMA, I don’t really count that as the first race of the season. It’s more of a kick to the head to get me ready for the first race of the season. SMRI is really my home club so it is the series that counts for me and how I gauge my progress.<\/p>\n
So I guess I\u2019ll start with Deming, given the weather there isn\u2019t a lot to talk about. I drove down Friday night so I could be set up and ready to go early Saturday, not that I needed to do so. Deming is always hit or miss with the weather and this time like in February it was a huge miss. It started with promise and quickly went south, it got colder, it started to rain, and then it started to snow about 10 am. So much for getting in some practice on the bike, which had an all new map on it, the hope was it would take care of the surging issue when the throttle was cracked open.<\/p>\n
Fast forward to Sunday, still cold but at least it was sunny, the new map, didn\u2019t take care of the issue, it was actually worse. So needless to say, the day was a waste for me. I let someone else use the bike for a race that day, he didn\u2019t seem to have the issues with the surging that I did, but then he most likely went right past it since he\u2019s more aggressive and faster than I am. I wish I\u2019d had the camera on for all of the races then I would have been able to see that I\u2019m back to coasting more again. It\u2019s a bad habit of mine, just like rushing the corner entrances I seem to go back to them when I\u2019m not comfortable with the bike. Really, not the way to go, I should be more diligent about make sure I ride correctly when I\u2019m not comfortable. Oh well, we all have things we need to work on doing better. It was still a really fun day; the ASMA group is really great to be around, going there always reminds me that I need to go faster.<\/p>\n
After that weekend, I went back out to Sandia with Aaron so that we could really fix this surging issue. He spent the better part of 2 hours with it on and off the track getting the map adjusted. I rode it around and played around on the new config for a few laps. I didn\u2019t find the surge, anymore, but it still seems to have a bit of a flat spot coming out of the north and south hairpins. Now, I\u2019m willing to bet money on the flat spot being more the way I\u2019m riding the bike then it being the bike. Especially after seeing the video of my first SMRI race this month. After spending all this time and effort getting the bike to a state where I was comfortable on it, I was really looking forward to the first SMRI weekend. We had the track day set up for Saturday and the races scheduled for Sunday.<\/p>\n
The weather on the other hand, wasn\u2019t going to let us enjoy the weekend. Saturday started off great, it wasn\u2019t too bad when I unloaded the bike and set up everything so I could head off to run registration. However, by the time we closed registration that day, the winds had picked up and the temps had dropped. As the morning went on it got colder and the winds got stronger and stronger. It was bad enough I didn\u2019t want to ride, I pulled my tire warmers off the bike and I swear that a pound of sand come out of them. I figured I\u2019d go out for the Intermediate session and see what it was like, before I had to tow beginners around the track for the next session. At one point coming out on to the front straight, I couldn\u2019t see the first turn. Now the front straight isn\u2019t that long. Scary. After the school session was over, I parked the bike and put everything away for the day. I didn\u2019t feel it was safe out there to ride, 1 session later the head Corner Marshall called the day since he couldn\u2019t see his corner workers from his tower. This is the second time; I\u2019ve gotten to say I told ya so. When are those boys going to listen? If I don\u2019t want to ride, there is something really wrong and they should consider calling it off, instead of telling me I\u2019m just being a wimp and doing one more session (giving people more time to fall down) before they then decide it\u2019s unsafe to ride.<\/p>\n
The last thing I wanted to do was mess up my STUNNING new paint job. Gone are the flowers from the past three years\u2026 well almost… there is one flower on the front fender. As you can see I\u2019ve now got white plates on the bike, it was time to grow up. I think that the white has made me slower. Sorry, I\u2019m getting ahead of myself, a huge Thank You to Brian at Speedin\u2019 Motorsports for making this paint job happen and to Kevin Gibson for creating this beautiful paint job.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sunday the weather was finally starting to cooperate, but the wind from Saturday had left drifts of sand in the pits and on the track that were 4 inches deep. It took hours to shovel my pit area, good thing I had help from the guys next door. We all worked on creating a path in the pit so that you didn\u2019t have to ride through the drifts on your way to and from the track, needless to say this didn\u2019t not leave me feeling good about the stickiness of the tires to the cold pavement As usual I only did one practice session; I\u2019m just too busy with everything else to make it out there for all three sessions, just once I\u2019d like to be able to do that. I was pleased with the bike, it was running great, it felt like it should.<\/p>\n
The first race of the day for me was a shocker, I just wasn\u2019t into it. My launch was so bad that I was afraid that I was going to get run into from behind. Found out later, I came really close to having exactly that happen, I hit turn one in 3rd place, but had a guy get around me in the first lap and then another one get around me in the second lap. I knew that I had someone else back there I just didn\u2019t know who it was. As I finally started to pick up the pace, I was bumping the stop in the staircase on this new config yes, it\u2019s like riding up 3 steps, super bumpy. I had issues with it last year too; I should have remembered that I need to add more fork oil to stop that bottoming out. Oh well, that just meant I wasn\u2019t going to be able to do much about fixing my lap times on that part of the track. (I did manage to have the GoPro and the GPX lap timer on for this race so I got some really great data from it.) I just tried to run defensive lines so that if the person behind me got close it would be really hard for them to pass me. I know how to be wide. He didn\u2019t even get a chance to show me a wheel until we came up on lap traffic. I knew that\u2019s when he\u2019d try to make a pass and figured I\u2019d go under when the guys drifted out in turn 6. It worked perfectly. He thought he was going to out power me and I just walked away from them both. I managed to hang on to 5th place in our biggest class of the day!<\/p>\n
The Am U race didn\u2019t work out so well for me. I didn\u2019t launch well again, and I was bottoming out on every lap in the turn 1A-1B section. I wasn\u2019t comfortable there so I ended up slowing down there and just trying to fix my rusty riding on all the other sections. I didn\u2019t finish as well, but I did drop some more time over all.<\/p>\n
I did four races, but this time I had to run with the big boys, in Middle Weight Super Bike. Ouch, I really hate being a rolling chicane and holding people up. I had a decent start unlike my first race of the day. I managed to hit the first turn in 5th place, but that only lasted until turn 3, by then I was down to 7th, then by the last turn I was down to 8th. I ended up just doing the same thing I had done for the Am race, slow down in the sections where I wasn\u2019t happy and working on other turns to drop some more time. By the end of the day I was only 3 seconds off from my fastest time for that configuration.<\/p>\n
Overall I was happy with that, it wasn\u2019t warm out and the track was still really dirty. My last race was the Formula Femme race, it was combined with the Modern Vintage. I ended up with the hole shot. Finally, a decent start, I\u2019ve got to practice those\u2026 Now would be a good time before I put in the new slipper clutch. It was about 2 laps before Josh got around me and I tried to hang on to the back of him, but that first section kept causing me to lose ground. I did manage to hold up Matt until the very last lap, the last turn but he ended up with a better drive then me. I finished first for the women\u2019s class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Even though I did go to a race in March with ASMA, I don’t really count that as the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":775,"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions\/775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}