Race #4 - Thunderhill, June 16-18
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June 16- Friday Half-Day Practice |
Finally, Sherwick straddled the
bike and put it in first gear only to discover that the shift lever needed
adjustment. He had replaced the lever after discovering a small stress crack but
the replacement lever had been re-designed with an additional bend in it to
clear the newer-style fairings. This made matching the original position in
3-D rather difficult. It took a couple of re-adjustments (in full leathers
and 95°F heat
nonetheless) for him to find perfection: too high and downshifts would be sloppy,
too low and upshifts would be difficult. Racers also change the shift lever
to “reverse” or “GP” shift which means that pulling up triggers a downshift
and pushing down triggers an upshift. This allows upshifts to be performed
while the bike is leaned (and the rider’s foot is on top of the pedal instead of below where it may get pinned between the lever and the ground). The main goal for the first two sessions
on Friday was to break-in the newly rebuilt engine (which not only had new
connecting rods and bearings but also new pistons). Scott from Desmoto Sport
had suggested keeping it under 8000rpm during break-in. Simple, right? Not
really because Sherwick had to short-shift and use higher gears than normal
which sometimes meant entering corners faster than anticipated due to less
engine-braking. Needless to say, it was not fun keeping an eye on the tach at
all times. In the third session, Sherwick was
able to do a personal best practice time of 2:07.9, beating the previous best
by a scant .04 seconds…and this was only Friday! He still had Saturday
practice to improve on that. |
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June 17- Saturday Practice Day |
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Session 1- Sherwick
set a goal of Session 2- The session was delayed 40
minutes due to major crash in group prior. Although he was anxious to get out
on track, he calmly clicked off
Session 3- As his speeds rose on
the straights, Sherwick began to experience more and more head shake where
the bars move back and forth with greater frequency and amplitude. The front
straight (between T15 and T1) and the back straight (between T13 and T14)
were the worst. He had experienced this before last year when his frame had
been bent but since then it had been blueprinted close to perfection by Gerry Piazza. The problem must
have been elsewhere. In addition, he felt the front end “push” in T8, the
fastest turn on the track taken at triple-digit speeds. Needless to say, when
the front end slides at 100mph, it is attention-grabbing! Eventually, he
almost lost the front end entirely as he felt a strange vibration coming from
the rear! Half a lap later, the
vibration continued to get worse through the long T2 sweeper. Sherwick pulled
into the pits to discover that the entire exhaust canister (11 lbs of weight)
was dangling off to the left side! The nuts had backed out and the heat
shield had even blown off on the front straight!
However, Sherwick
was able to get his time down to a 2:06.9 and was quite satisfied. He spent
the rest of the afternoon reattaching the exhaust with help from Gerry at
Desmoto Sport – this time with locknuts and RTV! |
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June 18- Sunday Race Day |
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Practice - Sherwick continued his
progress by dropping his time down to 2:05.5 in the single Sunday practice
session before the race. He had never been up to speed so quickly so we were
excited for the race. 750 SB- This was the first race of
the day and boy, was it full of excitement right from the first lap. Sherwick
was at the tail end of mid-pack and Ryan Bellows (#200) who was just in front
of him, got a little greedy with the throttle in the T12/13 chicane and
highsided to the moon! This was one of those spectacular crashes where the
bike flips end over end – if you had a Tivo, you’d be reaching for the rewind
button. Luckily, Ryan only suffered minor injuries to his hand but his bike
was completely totaled!
Sherwick managed to avoid the mess (without
riding off the track like some riders) and continued to race since it was not
red-flagged (both the bike and Ryan were off the racing line by the time the leaders
came by on the second lap). He even managed to achieve a personal best lap
time by seven hundredths of a second! Open Twins- Sherwick continued to
get massive headshakes on both front and back straights, losing several valuable
positions in the process as he backed out of the throttle. The headshakes
were so visible that I could see them from behind the wall! Sherwick later
commented that the bars were shaking back and forth about 3-4 inches!
Although Sherwick was disappointed
with his finishes (18th out of 27 in 750 SB, 14th out
of 22 in OT), he was grateful to have safely
uncovered set-up problems that only were revealed at race pace. Turns out
that the new 16.5” rim and tire package was 9mm taller than the OEM 17”
package, which was just enough to push the rear ride height past the geometry
“sweet spot”. Sherwick never had an opportunity to try this set-up out on
fast straights so the problem never surfaced until Thunderhill. We will now
seek to solve this problem at the next trackday that we have scheduled in two
weeks! |
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Enjoy the ride –- Team JaS Special thanks to: |
