June 2007 Race Report
Date: June 24th, 2007
Location: Portland, Oregon
Venue: Portland International Raceway
Series: OMRRA
Class: Open Twin Supersport
Open Twin Superbike
The forecast for Sunday, June 24th was rain, hail and thunderstorms. Typical weather for the NW, I assume. That makes two of the first three rounds at OMRRA this summer rain races.
Unfortunately, it didn’t just rain all day, which wouldn’t have been too bad. It was cloudy and had that look like it could dump at any point in the day. In the morning it started raining during the riders meeting. It looked like it was going to stay rainy for the morning, so right after the meeting I decided to put on the rain tires. Of course as soon as I finished putting my rain tires on, it stopped raining. Even though it was starting to dry out, I went out in the morning warm-ups with rain tires on. In 4 laps, I melted my rear tire. Rain tires are so soft that if it isn’t raining they heat up and just melt away. Luckily it was a used tire so I wasn’t too upset.
After the morning warm-up, I put on my racing tires and it stayed dry for the rest of the morning for the qualifiers.
Open Twin Superbike qualifier:
The track was still cold and damp and I didn’t want to throw it away in the qualifier, so I only put out enough effort to be on the front row of the grid for the mains. I finished in 4th place which put me on the outside of the front row for the mains.
Open Twin Supersport qualifier:
My competition was sand bagging it, so they could try to follow someone and learn their lines. I didn’t want to play any of their games and just put my head down and put in some fast laps. By the last lap, we had caught up to some lapped traffic and I was in the lead. I wanted to put some traffic between me and my competition to give myself a little buffer, which worked and I finished in 1st place.
Open Twin Superbike Main:
During lunch it started to pour, so I put my rain tires back on. But then about 30 minutes before my first race, the sun popped out and started drying out the track. So I decided racing tires would be better.
Of course, as soon as I rolled out to the hot pit lane for my first race, it starts raining, but now it is too late. I had racing tires on which on a wet track is slippery as ice. Only one racer had played the rain gamble correctly and had rain tires on. When the race started, he took off and opened a big lead on everyone. The rest of us had racing tires and it was like riding on ice. For the first 4-5 laps, everyone was tip toeing around. You had to be so easy with the throttle or you would just spin up the rear. Then it stopped raining and we got a dry line for the second half of the race. By then the first and second place riders had a big gap and I just played it safe and finished in 3rd place.
Open Twin Supersport Main:
By now the track had a dry line but I was still not 100% confident in the track. I got a bad start but was in third place by the end of lap one. But because of my lack of confidence in the track, I wasn’t able to push it 100% and was never able to catch my competition.
All in all, two races and two 3rd place finishes isn’t a horrible day considering how bad the weather was.
Now time to get ready for the Sun and the July races.