WERA West Round 3 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway

Race Report: WERA West Round 3 @ Las Vegas Motor Speedway

WERA West Round 3 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway

Man, this week has had some ups and downs.

Last Friday, at the Adrenaline Freaks trackday prior to the opening round of the WMRRA season, I spun a rod bearing and demolished the bottom end of my R6’s motor. Tearing it down in the new 28′ Performance Source trailer, I found out that I needed *everything*: new bearings, new pistons, new connecting rods and even a new crankshaft. Thankfully one of my new sponsors, I-90 Motorsports in Issaquah, really came through and overnighted all the parts I needed so that I could begin the repair as soon as possible. Dave Lanigan of Speeddealer Motors in Seattle then took over and with his help I was able to get my engine torn apart, completely cleaned, inspected, rebuilt and dyno’ed… on a *three-day* deadline. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to both I-90 Motorsports and to Speeddealer Motors, because without their help, this race report would have been a lot shorter!

Fast forward to *this* Friday: We are at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the third round of the WERA West series. Surrounding me are Corey Baum and Duane Warren of Performance Source, Brian Trudeau, Chris Burgess, Eric Sewell and Craig Outtrim, all preparing for morning practice. I, on the other hand, have put my bike up on footpeg jackstands and am pulling the suspension off my bike, eagerly preparing for the delivery of a newly-revalved rear shock to go along with the RaceTech 25mm G2-R cartridge kit that is now in my front forks. Lenny Albin of RaceTech Suspension arrives a short time later with the new shock and helps me install it, allowing me to go out in the afternoon to set up and tune my new legs.

Let me at this point digress and pontificate on the glory that is full RaceTech suspension: If stock suspension (which, on a Yamaha, is actually very good) was The Styx, RaceTech would be K.I.S.S. If stock stuff was Sports Illustrated, RaceTech would be the Swimsuit Edition. If stock was winning the World Series, RaceTech would be winning the World Series four times running… over the Yankees. In short, having RaceTech install their G2-R 25mm cartridge kit and revalve my rear shock was probably the single best thing I could have done to improve my bike’s performance – I wish I’d done it first thing last year. The bike turns effortlessly, is stable on corner entry and exit even over large bumps and rumble strips, and most importantly is so supple and compliant that while I can still feel every bump and dip in the track and know what’s going on, the bike never gets upset or loose.

On Saturday, we had a few more practice sessions and then I was registered for the Middleweight Solo 20, a 20-lap single-rider endurance race. Unfortunately, the weather had turned foul and gave us spotty rain and cold wind all day. I skipped the first practice session as it’d have been useless for gathering further setup data, and eventually went out in the second session simply to warm my body and mind up for the day. When my Solo was called to the grid, I went out with nervous anticipation – Solo endurance races are the only types of race that WERA West pays a purse for, and I had high hopes of placing well and possibly paying for most of my weekend. I got a good start and was in a position to contend for the win for a few laps, but it wasn’t long before I realized that the Bridgestone Type-4 Soft rear tire I had mounted, with two race weekends and a trackday already to its history, was not going to allow me to continue at the pace I was running. I began to fall away from the leaders and soon made the decision to use the twenty laps I had to take some notes about tire pressures and temperatures. Every three or four laps I would come in to the hot pit and my teammate Duane would check and alter my tire pressures so that we could gather some more information about optimum pressures and temperatures for very cold situations. By the time the race was over and I was done testing, that poor rear tire had been shredded so badly that the carcass on the right side felt as thin as cloth! However, it gave us valuable setup information and still stood as an admirable testament to the longevity of Bridgestone Tires, as I was still able to run a mid-pack race pace with the tire being worn and torn beyond anything I’ve seen.

Sunday treated us better in the weather department, waking us up with bright sunshine and 70 degrees at 7am. I mounted a fresh Type-3 Medium rear and then went out for our only practice session in order to scrub it in and verify pressure. My first race of the day was C Superbike, and I had a killer grid position: 2nd row, on the inside position. I wasn’t very aggressive on the start, however, and was soon swarmed back to mid-pack by the time we’d completed the first turn. Not wanting to stand for this, I put my head down and began making time back up. I made a few passes but lost further ground as I came on to the front straight in a wheelie and was unable to wrench my bike over in time to avoid a small left kink in the track. I ran through the dirt for a few yards before the track came back to the right, but during that time several bikes flew by. Then to make things worse, when I grabbed the brakes for turn 1, dirt and rocks that had clung to my tires prevented me from slowing enough and I had to take the escape road past the turn. I hauled around back to the track entrance as best I could but by the time I re-entered I was dead last. I managed to make back a few positions before the end of the race, but finished a disappointing 13th, with a best time of only 1:23.4, nearly two seconds off my best.

My second race of the day was B Superbike, and I was determined not to make the same mistakes I did in the previous race. I had a decent grid position again – fourth row, on the inside – and this time I nailed the start, moving up into third place through turn 1. A few of the 750’s in the class motored past me on the exit, but I set about chasing them down again. I took one a few laps later on the brakes into turn 5, a very sharp right-hand hairpin that leads on to the back straight. Taking the exit wide and driving out as hard as I could, I finally began to find the traction limits of my rear tire. Steering with the rear is fun, but not when you’re at a power disadvantage and are trying to put a gap down! However, the pass stuck and I set off chasing down the next bike, another R6. I followed him for several laps and then finally managed to make a pass entering turn 7, having set him up through the extremely fast right-hand sweeper just previous. That pass stuck too, and by that time it was nearly the end of the race so I concentrated on simply keeping those guys behind me. They made me work for it, but a lap and a half later I crossed the line in a much more satisfying 8th place, with a best time of 1:22.3.

After B Superbike I got a short break and then was called up for C Superstock. For this race I had a terrible grid position, way back in the 11th row. It was originally gridded as a two-wave start, putting me in the second wave, but thankfully it was changed at the last minute to a single wave. When the green flag flew, I shot forward as smoothly as I could, bringing the front end up a little but keeping my body as far over the front wheel as I could manage. I moved up from where I started but could only manage mid-pack by the time we hit the brakes for turn 1. Brian Trudeau was just ahead of me, and I set to work chasing him down. He was strong on the brakes but thankfully those RaceTech G2-R cartridges really paid off and let me be stronger! I took him on the brakes coming into turn 5, the second hairpin, and then squared off the corner and tried to really put the hammer down to catch the pack that was stringing out in front of me. I made ground on them quickly over the next few laps but once I caught up to them I found myself unable to make any passes because my rear tire had begun sliding around on the exit of corners. Unfortunately in my zeal to catch the front leaders I’d overheated my tires and by the time I caught up to the next group, it was all I could do to simply maintain my position. I tried for several laps to get around the bike ahead of me with mid-corner speed but in the end finished out of the top 10, in 13th place. When I got back to the pits and looked it up, it turned out that the temperature for the day was right at the high end of the Medium compound’s temperature threshold – I should have been on a Hard. Far cry from the day prior, where I cold-tore my Soft!

My last race of the day, B Superstock, was almost a non-starter. All weekend there had been an intermittent electrical problem in one of my primary injectors that was causing a cylinder to cut out for a few seconds every once in a while. Unfortunately, one of those once-in-a-while’s happened immediately after my start, letting the entire grid fly by me as I frantically waved my arm, praying to not get hit. Not the strongest conclusion to the day, but by that time with fatigue setting in and my tire selection wrong for the day, I was happy to simply bring the bike home with no more scratches than it came with.

Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the weekend. I achieved neither the results nor the laptimes I wanted, but it wasn’t a bad first showing after my big crash in January – it’s always difficult to come back and perform at 100% immediately after a serious injury. One thing I am happy with is that I was running competitive top-ten laptimes with probably 80-85% effort – not once in the weekend did I ever feel like I was in over my head, or coming in too hot for a corner. Because of this, I was able to pay a lot of attention to what my suspension and tires were doing, and how my riding position and style affected their performance. My RaceTech suspension worked flawlessly and even though I was pushing the temperature limits of my Bridgestones on either side of the spectrum, their grip level was brilliant and when they slid, they slid steadily and predictably. I owe all my sponsors a great debt for the opportunity I had this weekend: I-90 Motorsports, Studio819 Photography, RaceTech Suspension, Bridgestone Tires, Adrenaline Freaks Trackdays, Performance Source, Vortex, Woodcraft, R-Tech Fuels, MorePower Racing and V-holdR Cameras. I owe also an extra thanks to Dave Lanigan of Speeddealer Motors, who is not an official sponsor of mine but still went to great efforts to help me get my bike back together in record time, and give me a lot of help to get out of a really tight spot. Thanks everyone, and here’s to Miller at May!