Round 1 had its challenges, but overall was a terrific success. I dropped a pile of time between Saturday qualifying and the Sunday sprint race, and ended up placing second in Battle of the Twins Lightweight - a great start to the new season! My pace has improved substantially from last year.
The Prairie Dogs did well in endurance racing, even if Allen had a little moment....
Best of all, the SOAR series really seems to be on the rise, with most race classes growing substantially since last year. Amateur 600 had 33 entries!
Friday
Steve and I were able to attend the practice day on Friday this round, which gave us a chance to clear the winter cobwebs and get re-acquainted with the "Long Track" configuration at Grand Bend. I had it in my head that I was going to take it easy in the morning and not be in a rush to get out on track while it was still cold. Instead, I spent some time with Wayne Kennedy of Kennedy Motorsports, choosing what tires I would try this time out. We went through the options and eventually decided that the Pirelli Superbike SC1 slicks might be a good choice for me. An advantage is that they were available in a 180 rear (the stock size for my bike), instead of the 190 I was forced to run on Bridgestones last year. I gave Wayne both of my sets of rims and he mounted the Pirellis on one set and some Dunlop rain tires on the other. Just before lunch I had the bike ready to go, all safety wired and passed through tech. Temperatures were still low (about 9 C), but the bright sun was heating the asphalt nicely.
My best previous single-lap time on this layout last year was a 1:33.6, but mostly I had been running low 1:35s. I ventured out with my X-country ski underwear on under my leathers, and after my second practice session I was already down to 1:34.x on my clear laps, so that was right on target. Tires looked great too, coming off the track. Despite the cool air temperatures I wasn't getting any slides at all, so I was pretty pleased with the Pirellis Wayne had suggested.
Here is a video of just one lap in practice:
Allen showed up Friday evening, but he had not been able to get his BMW Boxer Cup Replica bike ready on time, so no sprint races for him this round. This was a bit disappointing, because I was looking forward to lining up beside him on the grid for BOTT LW.
In a bizarre last-minute financial move, Allen had, just the day before, sold the converted horse trailer that had been Prairie Dog Racing's swank trackside digs in 2014. That left us with the tent option for Round 1. The forecast was for a low of 0 C.
Saturday
And indeed, it was c-c-c-c-cold! Inside my tent I was wearing ski underwear, a T-shirt, fleece-lined track pants, socks, and a big woolly sweater inside one sleeping bag and with another sleeping bag on top. By the middle of the night I was so cold I just couldn't sleep, and by 5 am I finally gave up trying, left the tent and started walking around to warm up. There was a hard frost. Here is what my bike looked like in the pits:
Doesn't that look inviting? My Shorai LiFePo battery was none too pleased with the situation either, I can tell you that...
Saturday morning practice wasn't great. I didn't have the timing beacon set up, but I knew I was slower than Friday. Traction was poor at first and I even slid the front tire once under straight up-and-down braking for OMG corner at the end of the side straight. Fortunately, temperatures increased steadily over the course of the day and it was very bright and sunny, so by the time qualifying races started the track conditions were excellent.
My lack of sleep caught up with me and my 5-lap qualifying race was pretty miserable. My start wasn't too bad, there were no issues at all with the bike, and my lines were mostly okay, but I just couldn't get up to my normal corner speeds. Looking at the video later I found that my best lap was a 1:35.8, way off Friday's pace. It was fast enough to stay ahead of the slower riders and lower-powered machines, but not nearly good enough to challenge the guys I had hoped to compete with this year. Those would be the Bauer brothers (Jordan and Dylan), both on Kawasaki Ninja 650s (I think), who between them won the majority of BOTT LW races last year, Alex Radecki on his Ducati 748, and Bob Tziougras on his Ducati SS1000, which has the same motor as my bike.
Here is the video of the qualifier. We are gridded with the Lost Era Lightweight class in front of us. BOTT LW had 12 entries, which is more than we had in any one round all last season! (Allen should make us 13 for Round 2 - here's hoping). Actually I think only 11 made the grid because Jordan Renshaw's beautiful new KTM RC 390 decided not to run. (I told his dad Dave that the bike would look great in the living room anyway, but he didn't seem to find that funny.)
Bob was ahead of me off the start but at some point ran off the track turning onto the back straight. I can't seem to find that in the footage, but that is the story he told afterwards. At that point only the Bauers were ahead of me, but on lap 4 I missed a downshift entering OMG corner and Alex blew by me on the exit. Honestly I doubt it mattered because judging by the way he then gapped me it was inevitable that he would have got by me eventually. I qualified 4th.
Prairie Dogs Endurance
The first endurance race of the year went fairly well for Prairie Dog Racing, and would have gone even better if it hadn't been for the dreaded McAdam Curse. We had had a great fuel stop without spilling gallons of Shell 91 all over the bike, as is our normal practice, and SOAR Principal Ken McAdam had stopped by to congratulate us on our improvement - we hadn't set the pits on fire, and he hadn't had to pick me up with the recovery vehicle all day. Literally 10 seconds after that smart-ass comment, Allen rode off the track between turns 2 and 3, right in front of the pits, hit a big dip in the grass and flipped the bike dramatically. He had had some kind of coming-together with young Wes Forgie running in the GTU class on a CBR125 (and when I say young, I mean, like, too young to shave). Allen took a good tumble but thankfully jumped back to his feet quickly (or what passes for quickly at his age). Ken started to get out the recovery vehicle but Allen was able to pick the bike up and ride it back to the pits. Wes didn't even go off track. He just calmly rode into the pits to ask his mom if he could keep going.
Damage to Humpty the GSXR was minimal. Steve applied some of his sophisticated Ryerson Engineering skills and bent the shift lever back into shape with a pry bar and adjustable wrench. The rear brake lever was mutilated but who uses that anyway? The exhaust can was still more or less attached and the fairing only had minor cracks. I swear that 03 Gixxer is a frickin' anvil of a bike.
Allen was a bit woozy from his tumble so I replaced him. The bike rode perfectly and I was back up to speed in half a lap. Steve was in the pits asking Allen hard questions like "do you know where you are?". As I began to feel that the length of my stint was extending well past normal, I was getting pretty tired, going past the pits each time searching in vain for the pit board and eventually giving the guys the universal one-handed palm-up symbol for "dafuq?" After they did call me in for a rider change I laid down on the ground for a bit. Turns out I had done about an extra four minutes. Fitness is again an issue...
In the end we finished 7/10 in the GTU class with 98 laps. Without Allen's off-track excursion we may have placed much higher, since positions 3 through 6 did 104, 102, 101 and 99 laps. At any rate it is wonderful to have so many entries this year - 18 endurance teams across the three classes!
Here is the post-race photo. I really wish we had got little Wes in the picture. We gave him the gears a bit after the race but he truly is a cool kid and is already showing nice form on the track.
Sunday - It all comes together
Nighttime temperatures were much more reasonable the second day (about 9 C minimum), so
I slept like a baby and got a solid 6 hours. I was determined to do everything necessary to give myself the best possible chance of doing well in my one sprint race, which was scheduled for the first slot after the lunch break. I was very methodical during morning practice, working on controlled but late, aggressive braking into OMG corner, the Horseshoe, the entrance to the back straight and the carousel, and also experimenting with alternate lines in a few spots. I was checking my hot tire pressures, getting advice from Wayne and making adjustments. The bike was perfect, and I was fast by my standards - substantially faster than Friday and much, much faster than qualifying. I wasn't timing the laps but there was just no doubt that I had found a bunch of time.
After practice I spent a lot of time in the stands watching the morning races, but I was really conscious of the need to stay hydrated and not get overheated or tired from being in the sun. Like I said, I was determined to stack the cards in my favour and capitalize on the extra speed I had found in morning practice. I thought a lot about what my strategy would be off the start, and what I could hope to accomplish over the course of the race. Honestly I didn't feel like there was much hope of my challenging either of the Bauer boys, but I had been competitive with both Bob and Alex in the past so a podium finish was not out of the question.
There was quite a bad wreck in the morning amateur superbike race. One of the riders wheelied at very high speed on the back straight, and the wind got under his bike and flipped it over backwards. There were two ambulances and a fire truck on track for quite a while tending to the situation. Word got back to the pits later that the fellow had suffered a serious leg and hip injury, but nothing life-threatening. Get well soon Tomasz - we are all pulling for you.
After the long delay, things got pushed back a little and my race was the second one after lunch. Since the rider who was so seriously injured in the earlier superbike race was a friend of Alex's, Alex had more important things to do and skipped BOTT LW race. That really only left Bob for me to worry about. As you can see from the video, he had a better start than me (as always) but I passed him fairly quickly, apparently with superior horsepower. I then managed to hang with Dylan Bauer for a little bit, but he eventually gapped me and I resigned myself to third behind him and his brother Jordan. On the second last lap however traffic came into play and Dylan took more time than he should have getting around a lapped rider. With the distance between us reduced substantially, I put the hammer down and chased him over the final lap, showing him my wheel into OMG corner and again entering the Horseshoe, and then finally passing him between the Horseshoe and the turn onto the back straight. I knew from previous laps that I had a little more motor than he did, so once I was past him it was just full throttle down the straight, late braking with a defensive line into the carousel, and then it was all over with only the dogleg and the short straight to the finish line to go. Checkered flag, second place!
Checking the video later, I found that all of my clear laps were in the high 1:31s (!), with a best of 1:31.5 on the final lap - an improvement of more than 2 s over my best time from last year, and 4 s better than Saturday qualifying.
Edit: A few photos from Karolina Pelc. Thanks Karolina!
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