And that's a wrap...

Summary

Round 5 was the final points-paying round in the 2015 SOAR series.  Everything went according to plan and I managed to win the BOTT LW race and secure the title.  That's three wins, one second and a third on the season.  The Prairie Dogs had another good endurance race, finishing fourth in the GTU class, and rising to fourth overall after five rounds.  Final standings for the endurance classes will be determined after the October round.

Round 5

Round 5 of the 2015 SOAR series was held September 12 and 13 on the Screaming Alien layout at Grand Bend.  Steve and Allen made it to the Friday practice day again, but that wasn't possible for me since I am back teaching at the University this time of year.

I was entering Round 5 with a good lead in the Battle of the Twins Lightweight standings and really just needed to show up, circulate the track and not have a DNS or DNF to win the class title.  But of course that doesn't equate to zero pressure, because a mechanical DNS or DNF is always a possibility, maybe more so when you are on a Ducati.  Plus, I had had practically zero time to spend working on the bike since the previous round.  I fixed the clutch, but other than that the bike just sat in the garage being ignored for six weeks.  I showed up at the track Friday night with a machine that had not even been washed.  I checked the tire pressures and that was it - ready for practice.

Almost immediately after I got there, Bob showed up and started telling lies about how awesome he was on his new 749.  Even though I knew his reported lap times were impossible, I was still pretty curious to see how he would go on the new bike.  On paper, the 749 is the optimal machine for the BOTT LW class, just sneaking in under the displacement limit for liquid-cooled 4-valvers, and having better suspension and brakes than most other class-legal machines.  Still, as we all know, a race bike isn't something you can just buy.  You have to develop it over time, and Bob had only had the thing for a few weeks.

His old SS1000ie was at the track with a "For Sale" sign on it.  It has seen better days.

 Saturday Practice

The weather report had been pretty pessimistic early in the week, but had improved steadily as we approached the weekend.  What we ended up with was cool (even cold) conditions with a lot of wind and sometimes some spooky clouds to the south, but never any actual precipitation.

At the Saturday morning riders' meeting we were reminded about that the dangers of a cold track, and that tires coming off warmers would likely actually be losing heat over the course of a session.   Indeed I heard some riders reporting that the were having slides if they stayed out too long, but I didn't experience that myself.  I ran all three practice sessions beginning to end and the tires worked fine.  I think my tires might be magical.  I bought these Pirelli SC1s on the Friday of Round 1, and am still on the same set...and they look like they will last right through Round 6.  I have been riding fast enough to actually win races so I am not sure what gives.  At any rate, it is very economical.  I think the pro superbike guys typically go through a front and two rears every weekend.

This was my first time running this track configuration, so I tried to concentrate on figuring out the lines during practice, especially for the section that is unique to this layout.  I didn't get any timed laps but by the end of practice I felt reasonably well prepared for qualifying.  I also worked a bit on my body position, trying to get my bum back on the seat a bit more to get my back more inline with the bike.  This photo from Sheri Manuel shows the result of that adjustment.  I am still a tiny bit crossed up on the bike but overall I am pretty happy with my body position.  Anyway, not bad for an old fat guy I figure.

Sheri is a great photographer, and always seems to be in the right place at the right time.  Or, the wrong time, depending on your perspective.  For example, she happened to be standing by our pits when Allen and I were in the awkward position shown below.  When Allen pulls on his leathers, he needs someone to hold his back protector down and, about half the time, to then also "reach around" inside his suit to flip the little plastic tail bone protector down before he zips the suit up.  When Sheri  took this photo I had my hand inside his leathers directly on his butt, wrestling with the tailbone protector.  I was killing myself laughing with Sheri there doing the paparazzi thing.  From the look on Allen's face he was enjoying it just a bit too much.

Qualifying

Because of my points lead, I was starting on pole for the 6-lap qualifying race.  I had a typically crappy start, bogging the motor badly when the lights went out.  Steve Mitchell, Bob, Dean Hammond and Yarek Rutkowski were all past me before T1, but then Steve tucked the front end in T3 (1:14 in the video); he was still tumbling when I went by him.  I got past both Yarek and Dean on the first lap, and then set about chasing down Bob on his new bike.  I wasn't really making any time on him though - if anything he was pulling away a bit - and then on lap 3 I clipped the final apex of Big Daddy and it unsettled the bike enough to send me off onto the grass at the corner exit (4:57).  At that point I gave up on Bob and just put in a couple easy laps to come home safe in second.

I also want to mention that Round 5 saw the return of Kyle Newman to competition - the fellow who busted his femur in the pit bike race in Round 3.  I was astonished to see him standing there at the riders' meeting, so soon after such an injury.  He's got so much hardware in his leg I've started calling him Robo-Cop.  Anyway, he had some mechanical issues (with his bike, not the leg) and is not yet completely back to his regular form, but still managed a fourth in Lost Era lightweight.  Very courageous!  

Prairie Dogs Endurance

With the high winds, we didn't bother trying to set up the canopy in the endurance pits.  At times the wind was pretty strong and even though the air temperature wasn't that low it felt pretty cold sitting there beside the track for three hours.  On the bike it was fine though - the exercise kept us warm.

We got the bike set up early and so had a good position for the LeMans start.  This made Steve nervous, afraid he would hold up the faster riders on the first lap.  He actually asked me if I thought we should move the bike to another position, towards the back of the line!  I pretended to be really angry about this and yelled at him, giving him the gears about his crappy starts and told him that, this time, we expected him to at least be leading all of the GTL bikes when he came past the pits on lap one.  I guess this worked because he was indeed in a pretty good position on the first lap.

Because of the huge number of endurance entries, we had to set up the pits in a new location, on the little section of the back straight that isn't part of the Screaming Alien layout.  Ken McAdam set out some plastic cones to create a "blend line" for reentering the track, so that riders exiting the pits wouldn't get run over by bikes turning onto the back straight.  This pit location provided enough room for everyone, but made it awkward to communicate with the riders.  We had to walk part way up the infield straight and stand beside the track holding the pit boards.  Because the bikes were coming directly at us, and moving fast, it was hard to identify them in time to display the board.  

Steve got caught out by all of this in his first stint.  Allen showed him the pit board, probably a bit late, and while Steve was processing this information (was that Allen or not?) the rest of his brain forgot about the corner and he straight-lined it, putting him right in the pit exit area.  He couldn't go backwards through the pits, so he re-entered the track...but forgot about the blend line.  One-lap penalty for us.

The rest of the race was uneventful.  There were a couple of red flags, but nothing serious.  In the end we completed 117 laps, putting us fourth out of seven entries in the GTU class.  We also beat all ten of the GTL teams that turned in time sheets, and two of the four GTO teams.  Not bad!  By my math, we also rose to fourth in the GTU standings.  The endurance series continues into Round 6, so a third place final standing is not out of the question for the Prairie Dogs.  

Here is the mandatory post-race team photo.

By the end of Saturday I was totally bagged.  It had been a long week and I was sleep deprived.  The excitement of qualifying and endurance had kept me alert, but now I was dog tired, with an aching in my bones that felt almost like the flu.  I chased all of the drunk people out of the trailer and was in bed by 9:30.  Bob and Allen figured they would punish me for being such a party-pooper - they stole my phone and filled it with stupid photographs, including this selfie:

Aren't they a cute couple?

 Sunday

I was pretty antsy Sunday, being on the cusp of winning the BOTT LW title if I could just avoid any disasters.  Also, I was thinking hard about how I could find something for Bob in the race.  I felt confident that I could find the time I would need to stay ahead of him, if I could only get ahead of him off the start.

Practice went okay.  Steve clocked me on low 1:11s and maybe a few high 1:10s, a little better than what I had managed in qualifying.  After the last practice session, I noticed that one of the bolts that secures my instrument cluster had fallen out, and the resulting vibration had broken the other mount completely.  No problem - I had lots of time before the race so Steve and Allen and I came up with a solution that didn't involve too many zip ties.

Meanwhile, Bob was having problems of his own.  His new bike had a slight oil leak and had been smoking a little all weekend.  At some point (I think at the end of the qualifying race) he had received the black flag and was told not to bring the bike back on track until it was fixed.

Steve, traitor that he is, gave Bob as much help as he could, but in the end there was nothing to be done.

Bob would have to run the race on his old bike...

So for the race, it was Bob on pole, then me and Rich Wilson completing the front row.  I hadn't seen Rich before, but he was on a Ducati Supersport, presumably a DS1000 like Bob's.  So, three bikes on the front row all with the same motor.  Cool.  

Honestly the race itself was a bit anti-climactic.  I got one of my best starts of the season and left Bob behind, but Rich was ahead of me.  I followed him for a few laps and found he had similar straightline speed as I did and was very good on the brakes, but was a bit slower in some of the corners.  I eventually engineered a pass at the end of lap three, by getting a better drive out of the dogleg onto the start-finish straight and then braking late on an inside line into Turn 1 (4:22 in the video).  Checking the lap times later that next lap was my best by a full 0.5 s, so I think in the future I need to consider making that my normal line through the first turn.    

Anyway, after the pass for the lead I just settled down into some tidy laps, eventually doing 1:11.2 - 1:11.4 consistently over the final five laps.   I had no idea where Bob was and was afraid he might catch up and pass, but as it turns out he had packed it in after only a few laps because the big sweater he had on under his leathers was pushing his helmet forward so that he couldn't see properly.

So, checkered flag, third win of the season, and my first championship.  Nice.

So what's next?

The original plan for the 2015 season was to have a Quebec / Ontario championship round in October, with the top riders in each class from both SOAR and RACE competing head to head.  Unfortunately, as it turns out, there wasn't enough participation from the RACE guys to make it happen, so instead SOAR will just hold a fun round in October.  There is still the final round of the endurance series to contest, so I will be there for that, and will likely run the BOTT LW sprint race as well.

But what about next season?  This year I easily achieved my goal of winning the BOTT LW class.  That might not seem like a big deal and, objectively, it kind of isn't.  In the less competitive classes like Twins only a few guys even contest the entire series, so the way the points work if you show up and race every round you are going to place pretty high in the end.  Still, putting together a race bike that is fast enough and reliable enough, and then avoiding crashes and other DNFs for a whole season, and riding well enough to always be up in the points every round - that's no small feat.  I'm proud of myself.  Add to that the fact that I had a serious injury last season and almost gave up racing altogether, and this small victory means more to me than you might expect.

But now that's done and I am trying to decide what new challenge to take on.  I think I would get bored of just running BOTT LW again next year and trying to defend my title.  I am toying with the idea of trying to race my weird bike against the 600s again.  My lap times are already good enough to ensure I wouldn't be dead last,  but finding the additional 3 seconds or so to compete with the front runners would require more training, and also quite a bit of money dumped into the bike.  Plus, that class is kind of nuts, sometimes with upwards of 30 bikes on the grid, often with plenty of crashes - maybe not the best scenario for a guy who's closer to 50 than 40.

I really am a bit conflicted about this...but hey, the winter is long.