Race #4 - Thunderhill, July 6-8
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We were so close… |
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We were looking forward to this
fourth round of the AFM season following fine finishes at Infineon Raceway
and six weeks of down time. After another triathlon, we were back to school
at Rich Oliver’s Four-Day
Ultra Pro Camp. This is where we met twelve-year-old sensation Royce McLean (unrelated to Craig
McLean mentioned below) who is an up and coming 125 GP racer.
We were very impressed with the maturity and focus exhibited by Royce
complemented by his father’s unconditional support and we’re looking forward
to seeing great things from this young Canadian! Unfortunately for us, we
came away with an injured shoulder and knee and had to cancel the second of
our “Escape from |
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Sherwick dragging a tire instead of a knee at Pro Camp
Young GP racer Royce McLean (with backwards cap) |
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July 1- Track Day |
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We hadn’t been to Thunderhill since
April 8 so we started by re-acclimating ourselves to the track and then
focused on getting used to our new quick-turn throttle. The OEM throttle was almost
a half-turn (!!) which lead to awkward wrist action with difficulty getting
to full throttle. Our quarter-turn throttle was fabricated by Desmoto Sport
and was quite a bit more aggressive. We found this out in the first session
but by the end we had smoothed out our throttle control. We had no shortage
of things to try around the track (at least one technique for each turn),
each of which were now required as our speeds increased. What were once
“easy” corners were now quite challenging or even problematic. Just prior to
session 6, we discovered a missing quickshifter bolt which had been causing
shifting problems so we wrapped up after the 5th session. Here are
our lap times: session 1 = 2:05.8 session 2 = 2:03.9 session 3 = 2:04.0 session 4 = lap timer battery died session 5 = 2:03.1 |
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Track day best lap = 2:03.1 |
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July 6- Test Day |
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We decided to add an extra test day
to our race weekend since our track day last weekend was cut short due to a
mechanical. At that point, we had been riding in the 2:03s consistently, one
second away from our previous best practice lap time of 2:02. With the quickshifter
fixed (and our spare one loctited), we picked up where we left off and descended
our lap times over the course of the day from 2:03.0 to 2:01.9 all the while fine-tuning
the suspension between sessions. Since we were going faster, the bike was
behaving differently and required some adjustments: - we increased the fork preload to
address excessive front brake dive - we increased rear compression to
address mid-turn push on throttle application These adjustments alone contributed
to a 3/10 second reduction in our lap time, but the front was still pushing. We
then increased rear preload. Unfortunately, we did not get to test out this
adjustment after another bike spilled oil onto the racing line from entrance
to exit of T5 (the Cyclone)- perhaps the worst
corner for questionable traction. At that point, we decided to call it a day.
session 1 = 2:03.0 session 2 = 2:02.2 session 3 = 2:01.9 session 4 = 2:02.1 |
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Test day best lap = 2:01.9 |
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Practice makes perfect |
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July 7- Practice Day |
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Our practice day mimicked our test
day in terms of consistency and descending times. We had been getting tips
from Jeff Tigert, who we got to know from Rich Oliver’s Pro Camp last year.
He had recently started taking triathlon quite seriously and in exchange for
some advice in multisport, we had been getting some guidance from AFM’s
fastest. With Jeff’s coaching, we put
together a string of 2:03s (2:03.08, 2:03.02, 2:03.00) and descended down to
2:01.914 over the course of four sessions. This put us in the front of our
practice group but there were about half a dozen riders running within a
second of each other! By day’s end, we were able to make it up to 8th
fastest out of 30+ in our practice group (2nd fastest out of 5
groups). Race day would surely see these times lowered! session 1 = 2:03.376 session 2 = 2:02.920 session 3 = 2:02.513 session 4 = 2:01.914 |
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Practice day best lap = 2:01.914 |
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Jeff Tigert and his dad |
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July 8- Race Day |
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Sunday morning, we again picked up
where we left off which continued the trend in the right direction. In the
past, we had been slow to get up to speed, especially on race day. We set an
unofficial time of 2:00.51 on our lap timer, with an official time of 2:01.213
registered on the transmitter. For some reason, the beacon for lap timers was
set on the back straight whereas the transmitter times were recorded off of start/finish
(on the front straight). Therefore, we had already begun our cool-down lap
when the “official” time was taken. Nevertheless, we were 6th out
of 36 in our practice group and faster than ALL of our close rivals in Open
Twins. |
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Sunday practice best lap = 2:01.213 |
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Race #1- Open Twins |
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Due to the absence of a few big guns
including Brian Parriott and points leader Tom Montano
(who were off racing as a team in the MOTO-ST series
at Road |
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Open Twins: DNF, best
lap = ??? |
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Our awesome start from the 2nd row in fourth position!
Blackburn #110 leading Green #315 and
Sherwick behind |
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Unfortunately,
the crash truck was not able to return our bike until several hours later
while the damage to the bike was too great to fix. So our weekend was done
after less than two minutes of racing. |
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Race #2- 750 Superbike: DNS Race #3- Formula 40: DNS |
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Bodywork ripped off from the crash |
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Nevertheless,
we left the weekend on a positive note as we continued to improve and find small
adjustments to make us move forward. We are now at the cusp of a
break-through performance which we hope to see next time! We have
another long break before AFM round 5 which allows us plenty of time to fix
the bike, mend our injuries and put in some decent training. We will also be
sporting a slightly different look with completely new bodywork thanks to
turn 15! |
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Enjoy the ride! –- Team JaS
Special thanks to: |
