Racing

Last weekend was Round Five of the Masters of the Mountains championship at Miller Motorsports Park. We were FINALLY on the west track configuration, after having every other round on the east track so far this season (except for round two, which was the perimeter configuration with WERA).

Although I had an incredibly busy week at work, and had little time to even think about racing, let alone prepare for it, I decided to take the Ducati down to the track, as I had to trailer up my Ruckus scooter for photography at the track anyway. Sure, I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I was done with racing forever at the last round, but I thought that perhaps being on the west track might reinvigorate my desire to race and win, which had been seriously lacking. I’ve had really good success and lap times on the west track in the past, so I thought maybe I’d suddenly remember how to go fast!

I did a few practice sessions on Saturday, tinkered with suspension settings, and pushed as hard as I could. Unfortunately, the lap times were pathetic compared to my previous best from back in 2008. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the burning desire I used to have wasn’t coming back this particular weekend, if ever. It probably wasn’t helped by the fact that two of my great friends in our racing club both suffered broken collarbones in crashes. Whether it’s changing priorities, fear of the consequences of crashing, just a bike setup issue, or whatever – I’m just not feeling it. Maybe it’ll come back in the future, I just don’t know. Oh well, I was more than happy to focus on the photography instead.

I find the west track to be much more challenging for photography than the east. It’s more of a high-speed, flowing layout, and most of the places a photographer can safely stand, are quite far from the track for safety reasons. As has been the case the last few rounds, we had very warm weather and virtually no clouds – fairly harsh light conditions. I tried some new spots I hadn’t used before, some of which worked great, others not so much. We’re back on the west next round, so I’ll take what I learned and hopefully do even better.

Here are some of my favorites from the weekend:

After deciding not to race the last two rounds in May and June, I thought it might be kind of fun to go racing again this past weekend, for round four of our 2010 season.

I figured that because I was out of practice, I’d even head down to Miller a day early to take advantage of the Friday open trackday. Once again we were on the East track, as we have kind of an odd schedule this year that has us racing on the east course far more frequently than on the other three configurations. I really like the east, but do seem to go comparatively faster on the west for whatever reason. Oh well, this was a chance to get faster on the east!

The weather was hot and dry all three days. I selected the appropriate tires for the event, and signed up for the two twins classes I normally contest on my Ducati 848 (Twins GTO and SuperTwins). I have a friend that was thinking about buying my Honda CBR1000RR so I brought it along for him to test ride, but I didn’t plan to race it.

It felt good to be out on the track. Still, while I knew I’d be a little rusty, it was worse that I thought! My lap times on Friday were pretty awful. In the first session I felt so sluggish that I really just wanted to go home. I just didn’t feel into it. The second session was a lot better, but I still wasn’t feeling very comfortable or confident. I did all the usual things to try to go faster – take better lines, brake later, get on the gas harder at corner exit, carry more corner speed, and so on. I got a little faster, but still was several seconds off my best pace. Several seconds is an eternity in racing!

In the early afternoon sessions I was having some issues with my front brake binding up a bit, and that just made my comfort level drop even further. I was getting passed by guys that I would normally be passing, which was irritating for a competitive sort like me. This can’t happen. Unacceptable. I must go get them, and pass them.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t even try.

Oddly (shockingly!), I didn’t even feel like I wanted or needed to. It just suddenly wasn’t even important to me. Going faster on the track, improving my lap times, pushing myself to keep improving, and beating others out on the track just didn’t seem to be a priority for me any longer, whatsoever. Very odd. I had never had this feeling before, and I felt disloyal to the whole spirit of racing for even thinking such thoughts.

Was this just a temporary phenomenon, brought on by my rustiness, or being distracted by my recent career excitement? I wasn’t sure at that point, but I decided to not bother with the last couple of sessions of the afternoon. I just wasn’t into it at all. I got on the scooter and rode into town (about 7 miles) to buy my buddy a greeting card for his wedding.

Saturday I spent the first couple of sessions on the Honda, just to make sure it was in good shape for possible sale. It was! What a great, fun bike. So easy to go fast on. It made me kind of wish my friend wanted to buy the Ducati instead of the Honda (although I do love the Duc)!

I did one practice session on the 848, and it was okay, but I still couldn’t seem to go anywhere near as fast as I’d hoped. The bike didn’t seem to be turning particularly well, the gearing felt off, although the brakes were much better than Friday. I wanted to make some changes to the gearing and geometry of the bike, but had told my friend I’d take photos at his wedding, so off I went.

Sunday, race day, arrived, and I had just three brief practice sessions in the morning to try to get things back on track. I decided that I was going to try to be as aggressive as possible. If my racing career was coming to an end, I was going to try to go out in style, not with a whimper. In the first session I pushed hard, but the lap times still were very mediocre. I decided to change the ride height in the rear to help the bike turn more quickly. I added about 5mm, and went back out. BIG difference! Much better. I cut over a second from my best time of the weekend to that point (but was still off my best ever for that track by nearly four seconds!).

The first race of the day was Twins GTO, and I was in position three on the front row. If my riding was rusty, my start technique was far, far worse! Usually my starts are excellent, but this was about the worst one ever. The clutch acted really grabby, and the bike lurched forward inconsistently. When I shifted into second, I hit neutral instead, causing even more bikes to go by me. I was so frazzled at that point that I made the mistake of downshifting into turn one – into first gear! Now I had to go really slow as more bikes went by before I could shift again. Off the leaders went, leaving me in the dust. I was disgusted, especially with my son there watching this embarrassing performance from his dad. All I could do now was try to ride my very best to reel the leaders back in. There were four or five of them out ahead of me, and I still hoped to try to get on the podium.

I pushed and pushed to my comfortable limit, lap after lap. And lap after lap, the leaders got further and further away. I couldn’t match their times. I found out later that they were running times that would have required me to be at, or just a little better than, my best east track laps ever, which I hadn’t done for a couple of years. I finished in fourth place, as one of the guys ahead of me ran way off the track into the dirt before rejoining the race, and another guy was racing a bike that wasn’t legal for the class.

Remarkably, my best times in the race, in the previous practice session before the race, and the one before that, were all within seven-one-hundredth of a second of each other. I may be sluggish, but man am I consistent!

I decided not to race SuperTwins, as it was the last race of a long day, and I needed to get home to prepare for a busy work week. I also didn’t expect any miracle improvement to occur that would reignite my racing fire, so I figured why bother?

As I circled the track for my cool-down lap after the race, I wondered if that was my last race ever. I think there’s a good chance it was. I’ve always said that, as much as I love racing, I only want to do it if I can keep improving and stay competitive. In order to do that, the desire for it has to burn within me, as it did the first couple of years that I raced. It just isn’t anymore. I’m okay with that, actually.

I’ve had a great time racing. I won a bunch of races, had some incredible battles with guys who have become great friends. I even won a championship. But I never expected to do it forever. I’ve had other passions in the past (like golf) which took over my life and free time to an extent – and they were awesome. But then I moved on to something else. Right now my passions really seem to be more about the new business we’ve started, and my photography. And I’m quite content with that!

Okay, I won’t say never again. The next round is on the west track. I may bring the bike along just to practice. Probably won’t do any racing, though. I can see myself keeping the Ducati as a fun track bike, and doing track days for fun with my buddies. But I’m feeling quite comfortable with the idea of not racing anymore. And I couldn’t be more grateful for the incredible, thrilling experiences I’ve enjoyed racing motorcycles, and for staying safe through the process.

I hope this isn’t a sign that I’m… maturing! Wouldn’t want that!

Round four of our club racing series was this past weekend at Miller. It was quite warm – 90 plus, and bright and sunny all weekend.

As always, I had a great time hanging out with my many good friends at the track, and had the added bonus of having my eldest son around for the weekend as well.

I wound up taking a couple thousand pics through the weekend (about average for me for a race weekend), and I continue to try to find new locations, angles and techniques, to try and keep the photos fresh and interesting for the racers. They’ve been very complimentary, so it seems they’re pleased with my work, which always makes me very happy!

One very unexpected photo assignment popped up through the weekend. It turned out one of my racer pals was getting married in the Clubhouse facility at the track, and at the last minute he asked me if I would take his wedding photos! I told him I definitely wasn’t a wedding photographer, and had never shot one before, but he didn’t seem to mind. I felt a little odd at a wedding wearing shorts, sandals and a golf shirt, with most others there in actual wedding attire, but it was all I had with me!

I may do a blog post with more about the wedding photo gig soon, but first I have to process all the shots and get them to the happy couple.

It was pretty hot out around the track. For quite a few of the shots I was sitting on the ground on very hot gravel. Sometimes we have to suffer for our art, I guess!

Here are some of the shots from on and around the track over the weekend:

This past weekend was the third round of the Masters of the Mountains club racing series at Miller.

I had planned to do quite a bit of racing myself over the weekend, as after taking last month off to focus on my photography, I was really ready to get back out on the track on the bikes myself. My son Taylor was planning on coming out to the track to watch me, which would have made it especially fun. I was planning to run two classes on the Ducati – Super Twins and Twins GTO, and two on the Honda – Formula 40 and Amateur GTO.

Unfortunately, the week prior to the race weekend wound up being exceptionally hectic, with lots of new career developments including launching a new business. This meant I had absolutely zero time to focus on racing, or even load my trailer(!), so I had to keep my priorities straight, meaning racing had to take a back seat. I definitely hope to be out on the track again next month; hopefully my work schedule will allow it!

Still, I knew I wanted to travel down to Utah to take the photos for my racing friends and the club. It wound up being a beautiful weekend, with lots of sunshine and highs near 90 each day. It was pretty windy, which made keeping the big lenses still while shooting a real challenge, especially with the 600. I also hated the blowing dust on my gear, particularly when changing lenses out at the edge of the track as I moved between locations.

There seemed to be quite a few less racers than we normally like to see out on the grids, but those that were there really seemed to have a great time. Too many crashes this weekend, however! Thankfully, the injuries to racers, and damage to bikes, didn’t appear to be too serious.

We were on the east track once again. One of the challenges I’ve faced as a photographer out there, is continuing to try and find new locations, angles and techniques, to keep the photos fresh and interesting. It’s not easy, as access around the track is pretty limited. This particular weekend I found a couple of new spots that the club allowed me to shoot from, which helped me to create some fresh new images that the racers really seemed to like.

We also had some out-of-town visitors racing with us – the USGPRU kids (and grown-ups) were there on their two-stroke machines, which is always fun.

Here are some of my favorites from the weekend:

Wow!

I knew last weekend would be fun, and it didn’t disappoint! The World Superbike (WSBK) show came to the USA, to Miller Motorsports Park, which is always my favorite weekend of the year for motorcycle racing and photography. It was combined with some support races being put on by the Utah Sportbike Association – the “Lucas Oil Superbike Challenge,” featuring some of the top privateer racers from around the USA, and many of the guys I regularly race with at Miller in the Masters of the Mountains series, all competing for some very nice prize money.

The weather was quite nice, and got better each day through the three day weekend. The main races were on Monday (Memorial Day). It is always so much fun to watch the WSBK guys race on our home track. These guys are just SO much better than the rest of us, it’s absolutely amazing. It’s like they’re from another planet or something. Even when they haven’t ever been to the track before, they learn it so quickly, and are able to do lap times that are WAY faster than even the fastest guys in our club.

As a photographer, it’s great fun because all the bikes and gear look so clean and bright, with fancy paint schemes and sponsor logos. The racers always tend to look fast in the photos – because they are fast!

All the practice sessions, qualifying, and races through the weekend sure kept me busy with the camera. I always find myself taking thousands and thousands of photos. It means lots of time spent sorting, and trying to find the best ones – but it’s nice to have lots to choose from. I know these guys won’t be back for another year, so I try to take advantage of the opportunity while I can.

Here are some of my favorites from the weekend:

There were 2010 American flags in the infield, to commemorate Memorial Day

The scenery around Miller in May is always breathtaking

The umbrella girls on the grid, a motorcycle racing tradition

The first lap of WSBK race one, through "The Attitudes"

Jason DiSalvo told me he was going to drag elbow through some of the corners, so I told him I'd be sure to get a picture of it! My buddy Tyler did a great job painting his new helmet.

Troy Corser did some magnificent stand-up wheelies

Max Biaggi flying through "Witchcraft" - one of the fastest turns on the circuit

Noriyuki Haga through Witchcraft

First lap of the World Supersport Race, into Blackrock Hairpin

Haga chases Haslam and Camier through the "Release" corner

Carlos Checa had a nice lead in both races - too bad his Ducati wasn't able to finish either one

James Toseland on the Yamaha R1 in "Release"

Leon Haslam on the gas next to Roger Hayden

The End

As I expected, it was a busy weekend with the camera! WERA was at Miller for their annual round of racing, and our Masters of the Mountains series joined up with them, meaning big grids, and lots of fast racers. There was a practice day on Friday, a six-hour endurance race on Saturday, and a full day of sprint races on Sunday.

For a variety of reasons, I wound up not racing this particular round, and just shooting photos. It was lots of fun to be able to concentrate on just one of my passions this weekend, although I definitely was longing to be out on the track seeing how I could compete with the racers a few times. I plan to return to racing in a few weeks for round three.

The weather forecast for the weekend had been pretty awful, but, while rain poured down all night on Friday, during the days the weather stayed cool but dry. We had quite a mix of threatening skies, cold temperatures, and some wind, but overall it wasn’t bad at all.

The races were held on the perimeter (outer) track configuration at Miller, which does have some limitations as far as shooting locations and angles. Still, I tried to find some new and creative locations, angles, and techniques. I wound up taking over 5,000 pictures for the weekend, and was really pleased with the results. I’m learning more all the time about camera settings, techniques, and always trying to add an artistic flair to the photos while telling the story of the racing action. The racers seem to really like my shots, which makes me very happy.

Here are some of my favorites from the weekend:

Recently, I was experimenting a bit with the new version of Photoshop (CS5, which is fabulous). I decided to take one of the photos I shot at the first round of the Masters of the Mountains series last month, and play with some artistic effects. I chose a picture showing a nice battle between two excellent racers, Oleg Pianykh and Brant Wiwi.

Primarily I used an effect called “Ink Outlines” for this one. I’m enjoying learning more and more about Photoshop all the time, as it is an amazing and deep program.

I’m pretty excited, because two weekends I’ve had circled on my calendar for many months are finally almost here!

This weekend, WERA comes to Miller, and will be racing along with our Masters of the Mountains series. This should lead to bigger and better grids, with lots of fast racers. They will be racing on the Perimeter track configuration, which many of the racers really enjoy because it is extremely fast and fun, and because when the top pros from around the world come to town, that’s the configuration they run. Quite a few of the WERA racers will stick around for the following weekend, when the Lucas Oil Superbike Challenge races will be at Miller.

Speaking of top pros coming to town, the following weekend brings World Superbike racing to Miller! Definitely my favorite photography weekend of the season. The best racers, riding the fastest bikes, and all with very photogenic bikes and gear. Here’s a pic from last season’s action, featuring Max Biaggi on the Aprilia in the Release turn:

I’ve decided to focus on photography for the next couple of weekends, so my own racing will be on hold for a month. Been awfully busy lately, so haven’t really had a chance to focus on my racing the way I’d like. Still, I can’t wait to shoot thousands of photos the next two weekends.

FINALLY!

After a really long off season, we finally got back out on the track at Miller Motorsports Park for the first round of our 2010 racing season last weekend. Of course, I spent the last several months building a new race bike that I would use to primarily campaign the 2010 season – a nicely modified 2008 Ducati 848 (see below). I also tried to anticipate what classes I might run, and who I might be competing against within those classes. I finally settled on a plan of racing two Twins classes which have always been favorites – the Twins GTO and Super Twins classes, and that I might occasionally race the Formula 40 class on my Honda CBR1000RR.

I was bummed during the off-season to hear that a couple of my previous rivals in those classes, Mike Bunds and PK Avery, would not be racing this season. However, I knew that I’d have some very tough competition from guys like Brandal Glenn, Pete Jenner, Dan Short, Shannon Moham, and others.

We were hoping to get an extra day of practice in on Friday, but the weather was horrible. Lots of rain, cold – even some light snow! Fortunately, Saturday and Sunday turned out to be beautiful. Mostly sunny, with highs in the 60′s on Saturday, and high 50′s on Sunday.

A couple of months back I’d invited a Canadian buddy of mine, Etienne Giguere, to fly down to Miller for the first round, and told him he could race my CBR1000RR. He did come down, and like most everyone else, was blown away by Miller Motorsports Park and all the cool people in our club. He wound up having a blast, doing well in his races, although we had a number of mechanical problems with the bike, so he wasn’t able to race as much as we’d hoped. Still, we had a great weekend at the track. Hard not to like Miller – look how beautiful it is!

Etienne and another good friend of mine, Eric Jones, talked me into joining them on the team for the Endurance race on Saturday afternoon. I thought maybe I’d go out for 15 or 20 minutes, but I wound up staying out on the bike for nearly 40 minutes, finishing the race. We wound up taking third overall, and first in the GTO class! Although I wasn’t planning on staying out on the track that long, I found that each lap I’d make a mistake of some sort (missing an apex, not braking late enough, etc.). Whenever that would happen, I would say to myself, “Nope, you can’t stop yet. Go back and do it again until you get it right!” So I did, lap after lap, and I did actually wind up improving my lap times steadily all the way to the end of the race.

Etienne on the CBR

This was the first race or trackday weekend in a long time where I could just focus on one bike (other than the Endurance race, which was on the Honda). It was kind of nice, not having to readjust my riding every session to deal with different ergonomics, different gearing, RPMs, brakes, etc. I thought maybe this would translate into MUCH faster lap times on the Ducati. Not so much, apparently. To be fair, this was my first time ever on this track with the 848, so there was a period of adjustment.

The schedule called for my twins races to be the first race of the day, and the last race of the day. This worked great for the photography I do for the club, as I didn’t have to miss too much racing action while preparing for a race, or changing clothes after a race. It was a little weird, however, in the Super Twins race (final race of the day), as I’d been away from riding at all for so many hours between my first and second race! My lap times were about a second slower in the late race, which may or may not have had anything to do with the delay.

In the Twins GTO race, I was in the front row of the grid, in the third position (1C). Brandal Glenn was on pole on his 848, Pete Jenner between us on his SV650, and Shannon Moham was to be in 1D, although he didn’t make the start. I’d noticed Brandal’s lap times in practice were slightly faster than mine, so I knew he’d be tough. I also remembered watching him battle Pete last season. He’d get a bit of a gap on Pete due to the 848 having more power, but then Pete would stick the bike up underneath him in the corners, as he’s a very late braker and skilled racer. He’s also a demon on the starts.

The green flag flew, and to my right I could see Pete flying toward turn one ahead of me, and Brandal slowed by a couple of wheelies off the line. I managed to exit turn one just behind Pete, in second place. I stayed on his tail, ultimately passing him between the Tooele and Clubhouse turns, only to have him stuff the bike back underneath me into Clubhouse corner. I passed him again as we took off down the straight, and held the lead for a couple of laps.

Photo by Stephen Clark (www.stephenwclark.com)

I was wondering how long I could hold the lead, when all of a sudden a tricolore streak shot underneath me into the Tooele corner. Brandal! And he was moving. Alright, I thought, let’s see what you’ve got. Brandal had made huge progress last season, and I knew he was determined to have a great year. Down the straights our bikes were almost identical on power, alth0ugh his seemed to have just a tiny, tiny bit more. We were pretty similar on the brakes and at corner exit, but the big difference seemed to be corner speed. Brandal was much more confident railing through the corners than I was. Additionally, our gearing was quite a bit different, as when I followed him I noted six more times that I shifted per lap than he did!

Primarily because of the corner speed, Brandal gapped me a bit, and ultimately wound up with a pretty easy win.  I held off Pete and others for second place. We wound up with an all-Idaho podium (Brandal, me, and Pete), which was pretty cool.

I thought about changing the gearing before the second race, but because of my photo obligation, and the fact that I’d have no practice time to get it right, I decided to leave it. About five hours and a couple of thousand photos later, I put my leathers and other gear back on, and went out to contest the Super Twins class. Pete had crashed in another race earlier (fortunately he was okay), so he couldn’t go. There was a guy on a 1098 who we knew would be tough (Matt Cusamano), as he was putting up some amazing lap times in practice. Brandal was on pole again, and this time I was right next to him in 1B, with Cusamano in 1D.

The flag flew, and Cusamano shot toward turn one like he’d been fired from a cannon. I got a good start, but not as good as his! Brandal was doing wheelies again. I joked with him later that he was supposed to do wheelies across the finish line, not the starting line.

There was no way I was going to hang with Cusamano. I’d like to say it was because he was on a 1098, and I was just on an 848, but the dude was flat-out flying. I hung in second for a few laps, knowing that Brandal had to be right on my tail. Like deja vu, I saw Brandal show me a wheel on the inside going into the Tooele turn again. I managed to hold him off, and started to tighten my lines into the corners a bit. I knew he was running faster than me, so I figured I might have a chance if I could ride defensively for just a few more laps. I held him off for another lap, pushing as hard as I was comfortable. The next time we approached Tooele turn, I went in a little lower to block the potential inside pass, only to have him zip around me on the outside! Nice job, Brandal.

Photo by Stephen Clark (www.stephenwclark.com)

I hung with him pretty well, but just couldn’t match the corner speed, and knew my extra upshifts and downshifts weren’t helping, either. Now I knew I just had to try to hold on to that last podium spot. On the last lap, as I entered turn one, I went too deep, and had to slow way down to avoid a problem on the dirty outer edge of the corner. As I turned it back toward the second apex, I saw another bike out of my peripheral vision, trying to duck underneath me. Dan “Shorty” Short, maybe? I wasn’t going to stick around to find out. I shot out of the corner, put my head down, and tried to ride a hard, perfect lap. It turned out to be my fastest lap of the race. Amazing what a little motivation will do. So, I held on to third place, and salvaged three podium positions in the three races I ran over the weekend, which was pretty decent.

My overall feeling from the weekend was good, but not great. The best part, of course, was all the fun I had with Etienne, my Canadian buddy. I hope he can come down again for a future round, as we had a blast.

Like any race weekend, I want my lap times to just get better and better with each session. I really worked on some things this weekend, particularly braking later as I approached the turns, and felt like I really made some progress. I also was at full throttle wherever I could be, and just felt like my bike had no more to give in many places around the track. Ultimately, my best lap times were about 1.5 seconds slower than my best ever on the East track. Even though those were on a 1098 or CBR1000RR, my goal has still been to get into the 1:39′s, and I was nearly three seconds off that pace. The big deficiency seemed to be my gearing, but even more so my unwillingness to exceed a certain threshold of corner speed, which others were willing to surpass. This kind of irritates me, but I suppose it happens to others as well.

I’ve just reached a point where I find my priorities shifting. I actually am finding myself caring more about producing beautiful photos of the races than I am pushing the bike and myself to the max to try to win races. Maybe that will change, but for now that’s what I’m feeling, and I’m actually very cool with it. As a racer, I feel like probably that’s not how I should be thinking or feeling, but I’m just being honest. I’d already been thinking this would probably be my final year of racing. I can’t do it forever. We’ll see where it goes from here. I still had a blast, and love the thrill that racing gives me that nothing else can – I just don’t feel as gonzo about winning as I did a couple of years ago. I do know that I’m going to keep going out there and trying to improve my technique and lap times. I won’t just go out and circulate, that’s for sure.

I’d planned to do another trackday weekend before the start of the racing season, and Thunderhill and Infineon seemed to be the best bet. However, the weather forecast looked really poor, so I decided to travel south down to Las Vegas, and do some actual racing with WERA instead.

I’d never ridden the Las Vegas Classic Course layout before, and also had never raced with WERA, so I really wasn’t sure what to expect. The weather turned out to be beautiful, although it did get extremely windy on Sunday afternoon for most of the sprint races.

The WERA folks were great to deal with, and the paddock was very friendly. There were quite a few VERY fast guys there racing, including a number of AMA level racers like Chris Peris, Jeremy Toye, Jimmy Wood, Reno Karimian, and others. Peris was absolutely on FIRE on the BMW 1000RR, right around the lap record set by Jason DiSalvo a few years back.

The first practice session on Saturday morning was pretty awful. I was stumbling my way around the track, trying to learn the lines, and feeling really slow. I had some idea of what I felt my lap times should be based on the results I’d seen from earlier races there, and I wasn’t even close. I really felt like I shouldn’t be there! Fortunately, the next couple of sessions went much better, and I wound up cutting a couple of seconds a lap in each subsequent session, to a range I was more comfortable with.

One thing I didn’t like about the WERA format, as compared to the one I’m used to in the Masters of the Mountains series, is that there is very little practice time. I managed to get just three 12 minute sessions in on Saturday morning – two on the Ducati, one on the Honda. Nowhere near enough to feel comfortable.

On the advice of a friend, I signed up for one of their “Solo” races, which is a 20 lap race on Saturday afternoon, mainly just to get more practice! The track in Vegas is really short, with lap times around the 1:20 range, so 20 laps doesn’t really add up to all that much. Oddly, the sprint races there are only six laps, which is really short! Six laps at around 1:20 is eight minutes. Because of this, with so little practice time, and such short races, on both days the racing was over by around 2:30 PM – leaving me wishing for much more practice time!

Photo by Brandon Bones / Studio819

In the 20 lap race, I rode the 848, wanting to get as much race practice time as possible, since I’ll be primarily be racing that bike this season. There were 22 racers on the grid, and I was to start in position nine. I had no idea what to expect with this bike on the start, as I’d never had the chance to practice start launches with it. Turned out it worked very well! I passed several guys off the line, but as turn one quickly approached, with such a quality field of racers, suddenly I was surrounded by wall-to-wall bikes! Turn one was pretty wild, exciting, and hairy, with survival being the main goal. I made it through okay, and mainly just tried to use the time to practice my way around the track, hoping to learn the best possible lines, test the levels of grip, and improve. I wound up finishing 16^th. Not very impressive, and what made it worse was that I didn’t improve my lap times one bit from the earlier practice sessions. That irritated me. A lot.

I went to bed that night with a good bit of angry determination. I felt like I’d really ridden entirely too carefully. Sure, I didn’t want to do anything stupid this weekend, messing up a bike or myself so close to my real season starting. But come on. This was ridiculous. I wouldn’t allow it on Sunday. I didn’t drive 10 hours each way to embarrass myself and not improve.

Sunday morning I went out on the Ducati in the first practice session and pushed much harder. Came back in to the paddock, checked the lap timer and found… same crappy lap times! Grrrrrrrrrr.

Next session went out on the Honda and really got into a nice battle with several very fast guys. Came back into the paddock and found… yes! Four seconds faster per lap. That’s more like it. Went out on the Ducati in the next session, and cut three seconds from the previous Ducati session. Finally got the Honda down to 1:23.7 and the Ducati to 1:25.1. Not as fast as I’d like, but a big improvement from Saturday.

In the afternoon, the weather was nice but the winds picked up to around 40 mph. It was pretty wild in a few sections of the track! Everyone’s lap times increased a bit as a result.

My first race of the day was the A Superbike, on the Honda. My expectations in this race were very modest to say the least. These guys were the fastest of the fast, on some very strong bikes. I got a good start, and did my best to hang with the fast boys and learn. I did okay, wound up 16^th out of 20.

Now came the races I really cared most about, the ones on the Ducati, in which I felt like I had a good shot at being more competitive. The first was Heavyweight Twins. I got an excellent start from the eighth position on the grid, and on the back straight the 848 roared to life and swallowed up a few of my competitors. This was fun! I knew that a couple of guys I’d passed had lap times very similar to mine in practice, so I figured they’d be right on my tail. They were!

With only a six lap race, one mistake and you’re in big trouble, as there’s very little time to recover. After a couple of laps, I knew that I had now moved up into third position, with a chance for the final spot on the podium. I entered the very tight turn three at high speed, clicked a downshift and… nothing. Uh-oh. Didn’t quite click that shift firmly enough – false neutral! I knew from experience that it’s better to click to a higher gear at that point, so I did. Third gear, when I desperately needed a good drive in second gear from that slow corner. Not good. As soon as I could I clicked it back into second and got on the gas hard, but it seemed like I’d lost a ton of time. Still, I managed to hold off the two guys right on my tail.

Photo by Brandon Bones / Studio819

I rode as hard as I could without making mistakes, and managed to grab the final podium spot! I really wasn’t expecting that, and it felt great! All the frustration of Saturday melted away, and the long trip suddenly seemed worthwhile. Amazing how racing does that to you.

The final race of the day for me was the one I actually had felt I might be most competitive in – the Senior Middleweight Superbike. Back out to the starting grid the Ducati and I went. We were in the second group of the grid, with a gap of a couple of rows between us and the Senior Heavyweight Superbike class. I thought we would be a second wave off the start, so I was surprised when the number boards came up and the guys immediately around me started revving their bikes! I thought, “Why are you guys doing that? We’re next.” But I figured if they’re going, maybe I should too! Quickly I put the bike into gear and the green flag flew. Even with that moment of confusion I managed to get a great start, and passed a few of the literbike guys into turn one, and then picked off a few more as we made our way through the first few turns. Because the groups were mixed, it was hard to know who was ahead of me, and who was behind, as I passed a few, and a few passed me.

When I crossed the finish line I really didn’t know how I’d done, but I felt like I’d ridden pretty well. I knew that a couple of the guys I’d started with had never gone by me, so I figured I might have finished pretty decent. Turns out I took second place! What a great way to finish the weekend.

All in all, a weekend that started out pretty poorly really turned out to be quite fun and successful. True, I still wasn’t that thrilled with my lap times, but am I ever? I kept the bikes upright, was able to have some real racing practice against tough competition, and enjoyed learning a new track (and new bike) in the process. I’m really glad I went to Vegas!