K2AK WMRRA Round 4 Report
The Bionic Man “K2AK” reporting WMRRA Round 4
This was my first race weekend after my wonderful crash last round during the 750SS race where I fractured my clavicle.
I had a titanium plate and pins installed three days later and hitting the rehab hard.
I’m was back to being VERY nervous about racing and simply hoped to survive the weekend. I didn’t get the opportunity to test on Friday with Adrenaline Freaks because of work, so it was a mad morning getting ready for racing on Saturday. I couldn’t believe how hard it was raining! I made a last minute decision not to race in the rain and instead corner work in Turn 7.
Now for those of you who have not raced in the rain, it is a lot of fun and I would normally have went for it, but Sunday was forecasted to be sunny and my leathers take about a week to dry out. Nobody normal wants to wear wet leathers. Mostly, I didn’t want to look like a Smurf for three days after a rain race. My blue leathers bleed right through into my skin and turn me blue…
Turn 7 was a great spot to watch the races! We had a couple of incidents throughout the day, but nothing major. I had a VholdR with me and placed it on the inside of Turn 7 during the 600SS race and the Novice race for some cool footage. You can see some of it in Slow Eric’s video:
The track dried out mid morning and I was totally jonesing to race and feeling like a wuss for not getting out there. Oh well.
The only major incident of the day was Brad Richards crash in turn 8. Brad and I are usually pretty close to each other and it kind of freaked me out. He had to be airlifted, but it turns out that it was fairly minor injuries, a bruised butt and a concussion. Ha Ha! Lucky!
Sunday the weather was much nicer. I had a decent practice session and got in eight laps. My times were in the 35s and not all that great, but I felt okay and trying to shake the post-crash cobwebs out of my head was really my main goal anyways. We had some fun strapping cameras to Devon McDonough and Lil Mario (I hope he’s cool with being called that) to document some of their racing. We did get some cool videos and I’ll post up what I can soon. Here is Lil Mario’s first race of the day:
600 Superbike Race. After only an eight lap practice session, I made my way to the starting grid and got situated in row 8 position B. So back to the second wave for me. RED lights on. Lights go out and the first wave is off. Second wave green flag is up. Engine revved to 10000rmps. Green flag waving and GO GO GO!!!!!!
I totally clutched it. Oops! Geoff L #316 goes flying by me (Nice!) with a lot of others too. I had a couple of moments in the first couple of corners and then I was able to settle down and get into a decent pace. I slipped in behind Matt G #322 for the rest of the race as we started cutting through the back pack. We had a couple of nice passes and next thing I know the halfway marker is up. It was a nice and easy race for me and I didn’t expect too much from my times. Was I surprised when I got past the checker flag and back to the pit to discover I had a personal best time of 1:33.8. I know it’s not super fast, but it was not a BP day. I couldn’t wait for the 750SBK race to see what else I could do.
750 Superbike Race. Right before the race the Nervous’s struck hard at turn 2 and decided that nobody would have to race hard for the rest of the day. I’m know it wasn’t intentional, but it sounds funny. One of the novice racers oiled the race line into turn 2 and was rewarded with a crash and helped a few others crash too…
Track control let us do two sighting laps to see what we thought about racing over the oil cleanup. It was pretty bad, you’ll see it on the video, but it goes by fast. Several of the more seasoned experts exited the track after the sighting lap. I figured I could take it easy and maybe get a better starting position for the next round, so I stayed out. For me it was like being in the intermediate group of a track day having a nice leisurely ride around the track… 85 bucks for 15 minutes of riding… maybe I should have skipped it. I had really slow times but managed not to be lapped or finish last. I came in 21st.
So another race weekend is under my belt and I am looking forward to doing a couple of tweaks to my 600 and getting out there August 30th. I’ll post up a couple of videos shortly and shoot them out to everyone.
