WMRRA Round 1 - Pacific Raceways 31st March - 1 Ap...
Well the start of the actual 2007 race season is here. It officially kicked of on the 31st of March and the 1st of April at Pacific Raceways for the WMRRA event.
Saturdays WMRRA event started by leaving the house at 545 am to make the drive and get there early to set up the pits, and get the bike and gear thru tech inspection. Everything went off with out a hitch. The weather report was calling for rain until noon and then a dry day. Good thing I still have those rain tires mounted from yesterday. I had two practice session before lunch, both in the rain/wet. I am working on gaining much needed confidence in the wet with rain tires. I need to learn to trust the tires a bit more and continue to be smooth with all inputs. The first 2 sessions went off very well. A lot of crashes, with guys going to hard to start with, or on DOT's, etc.. I was concentrating on just being smooth and trying to show a fellow racer, John Recinos #912, some of the faster lines around Pacific Raceways. Lunch cam and the sun came out and started drying the track immediately. You could look around the pits and see everyone scrambling to change back to DOT tires. Luckily for me I had an hour before my race, so no need to rush. I got the DOT's on and put on the tire warmers. Next up...RACE time. I was grided in row 5 out of 7 rows, maybe about 20th place. Not the best, but oh well. At the drop on the flag and light going off, most of the guys in front of me sat there. This caused a big gaggle, but I was able to hug the concrete retaining wall and move up to about 7th place. By the end of the first lap I was in about 5th place. Time to settle in and get down to business. I moved all the way up to 3rd place and got in a little battle, but then decided to wisely back off and settle for 4th place. I only needed to finish this race and my race on Sunday to graduate out of Novice and race expert the following weekend. "Big Picture" racing took over and I finished 4th. Today was a great day, and I continued my string of all top 5 finishes in EVERY novice race I have entered. You can view Saturdays WMRRA sessions/race at: http://studio819.smugmug.com/gallery/2668314#141226804
Sundays morning started off pretty much the same way. Calling for dry skies until around noon again. Luckily I left the DOT's on so I wont have to change them for the morning practice. Today is only one practice session and one race. I go out early in the session, again trying to show a few of the new Novice racers some of the lines that have been taught to me from the extremely fast guys. I ran about 5-6 good laps and pulled in to the pits to have Barry of GP Suspension make a few tweaks. He gets me back out on the track with about 3 laps left in the session. Bike is working great, especially in the rough payment we have at Pacific Raceways. Time to pull it in and set the bike up for the race. Wouldn't you know it, the drizzle doesn't start to about 1215, and my race is at 115. Just drizzle, do I swap for rains or not? I decide to go ahead and swap, good thing I did because as soon as I got the front tire changed the skies opened up. Thank god we started when we did. As we are sitting on the grid for what hopes to be my final Novice race, it starts to hail. OH GREAT! For this race I am gridded on the front row, which is a good thing because there was aprox 54 raced field. I get a good start, probably 3rd place going into turn 1. By the entrance to turn 4 I had out braked the top 2 guys and end up in 1st place. I held the early lead for the first 3 or 4 laps. By the end of the 4th or 5th lap we were starting to lap the field. This is when things got a little scary with the new novices (1st race and definitely 1st race in the rain) were all over the place. Not holding the same lines mid corner is scary enough, but in the rain. I backed it down a bit and actually in the midst of all of the lap traffic got pushed back to 2nd. No big deal right? Well it bunched the front 4 of us up. As the laps started to count down I found myself in a 3 way battle for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Again, I wised up and said to myself "This is a rain race and your LAST novice race, JUST FINISH"! I ended up finishing a close 4th. Not a bad weekend. Gained confidence in the wet and hopefully will be graduated out of Novice and running the expert class the next weekend of WMRRA racing. You can view Sundays WMRRA sessions/race at:
http://studio819.smugmug.com/gallery/2673216#141520784
I would like to take this time to thank everyone involved that allows me to race. My wife, Jennifer; my son, Brenden; family and friends; and all of my 2007 Sponsors! I couldn't do any of this with out the support and help from each and every one of you. Thanks!