In all a great weekend, I really love this track.\u00a0 I may have to find a way to live here.<\/p>\n
Friday was supposed to be a practice day but we didn’t get to go out on the track until the afternoon, too much rain and lighting.\u00a0 I swear the storm was right over the top of the track it caused the power to go out in the garages 2x.\u00a0 It was great to have some time to finish safety wiring the bike and to swap tires around.\u00a0 Since the track was dry after lunch, I did get 3 20 minutes sessions in… which was less then 10 laps.\u00a0 When you’ve got that many corners on a track you aren’t familiar with it’s hard to remember where you are.<\/p>\n
I did lose my way a few times, I\u2019ve ridden the full course so I really wanted to turn left after turn 6, but the track goes right, for what ever reason I struggled with Witchcraft in all those sessions.\u00a0 After my last session I rolled the bike into Tech. so I\u2019d have less to do the next morning.\u00a0 I really hate rushing around trying to get on the track.<\/p>\n
WERA is an RACE organization.\u00a0 They don’t care if you get any practice time; I hear that’s not what they are there for.\u00a0 Sat, we all got 1 15 min practice session. Then they ran their 6 hour endurance race.\u00a0\u00a0 So we hung out watched the start and then went home to make a great dinner.<\/p>\n
Now the good thing about this was it gave us time to watch the video I took from the bike on Friday.\u00a0 After watching it and getting some great advice from The Michael Carr I thought for sure that I\u2019d be able to drop some time.\u00a0 He kindly pointed out I was coasting into a few corners and that it was costing me.\u00a0 There were also a few suggestions on how to fix a few lines around the track.\u00a0\u00a0 I think the best lesson he gave me was on the way to the track.\u00a0 We were coming up on Sheep Ln, I was following Mike.\u00a0 He started to slow down, not quickly just gradually.\u00a0 I was thinking what in the world is he doing?\u00a0 The Suburban behind me was not impressed and blasted around both of us then turned onto Sheep Ln.\u00a0 Then Mike\u2019s brake lights came on and I was thinking why bother you don\u2019t need them to make the turn.\u00a0 Then, he hammered it and sped away.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t help myself I burst out laughing\u2026 I knew exactly what he was doing.\u00a0 Teaching me a lesson about coasting into my turns\u2026 Dang he\u2019s one smart dude.<\/p>\n
So on to the Sunday races, we got 2 15 min practice sessions, it really isn’t enough to allow you to work on any thing its just to see if the bike starts and rolls and let you loosen up a bit.\u00a0\u00a0 I thought that I\u2019d planned out what I was doing fairly well, but not so much.\u00a0 I had the first race and the third race, dang. I was tired after that.\u00a0 Turns out NOT coasting is a lot more work.\u00a0 Who knew?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The first race was interesting being gridded on the 24th<\/sup> row, in the second wave.\u00a0 No chance of being anything but a back marker.\u00a0 It was a good lesson and it got me ready for the Women\u2019s super stock race.<\/p>\n The second race Women\u2019s super stock was the whole reason I decided to come out and run this round.\u00a0 I want to grid up with some really fast women and see if I could learn a few things about how to go faster.\u00a0 As it turns out, I did but I had no idea that I\u2019d be gridded next to Melissa Paris.\u00a0 Talk about intimidating.\u00a0\u00a0 As I expected she was off like a flash.\u00a0 The three women that finished in front of me were gone by the time we hit the first turn.\u00a0\u00a0 I thought hey this could be okay, I could live with 4th<\/sup>.\u00a0 Then I missed my second down shift and coasted through turn 6 just like I had done in turn 5.\u00a0 At that point Kat went by me, I was thinking, no way.\u00a0 I just can\u2019t let her do that.\u00a0 I decided to see if I could stay with her.\u00a0 I was actually surprised that in Toole turn and Club house I almost ran into the back of her.\u00a0 I started thinking, wow, I think I can pass her.\u00a0 So I made it a point to stay close to her until we got on to the front straight.\u00a0 When she just walked away from me, but once we got around to turn 3 I was back on her.\u00a0\u00a0 I waited for the drive out of Witchcraft I got a great drive and made the pass up the inside coming into the Attitudes.\u00a0 I made sure I hit each apex after that until we crossed the start finish line. I\u2019m not aggressive when I race which is part of my problem, but I was really pleased with the pass.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t over think it for once.<\/p>\n The rest of the weekend was anti-climatic after that race.\u00a0 It would have been great to actually place in front Mike for a change, but I just couldn\u2019t get it done and after I scared myself coming out of turn 6 on the gas on the rumble strips with the backend of the bike dancing from side to side.\u00a0 I decided that it wasn\u2019t going to happen and I\u2019d just settle for finishing behind him.\u00a0 It was the only down side to the weekend really… Just once I need to beat the dude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In all a great weekend, I really love this track.\u00a0 I may have to find a way to live here. […]<\/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-782","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\/782","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=782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":783,"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions\/783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diomederacing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}