Tom's Race Report from California Speedway

02/05/2006 Fontana, CA - with WERA West

 

 

First race weekend of the year!  Looking forward to having the bike working well.  Freshened up the motor added a Brembo Master and replaced the tranny.  What a difference!  The bike felt great.  It's way more bike than me.  It will be fun this year trying to get to the potential of this bike!  Made a bad decision on tires.  Put a 1847 slick on and never could get it to hook up.  Wasted all day Saturday forcing myself to make it work not realizing I should change it and move forward.  Finally put a PR3 on and got 1 lap Saturday and immediately knew it was way better.

Sunday the first practice did 6 laps and then only 2 second session.  The PR3 is not good for many laps and I was going to do 3 races.

 

The first race was Unlimited (A) Superstock.  Got a bad start in some really fast company and finished mid pack.

Next race was Senior Superbike (Formula Gixxer).  Got another bad start and all 14 bikes on the grid seemed to be in turn 3 at the same time.  It was fun, everybody was cool and came out of the bang fest all upright.  I was in 5th behind Tanner (who would run away wire to wire),  Kopecky and 2 other bikes.  I put my head down and followed for the first 2 laps and passed into turn 1, what a freaking blast!  I forgot how much fun racing on a good bike was.  I got into second, couldn't even see Tanner and figured the 3 I passed were right behind me, yet I never saw them.  Wound up with a second with a 6 sec lead on third.  The PR3 was starting to go off on the left side, I was beat so I called it a day.

I never got to my goal of 32's.  I still feel good about what I got done.  The time will come off, just slower than I want, but I have patience.  I will not do any AMA this season, not sure if I can ever get this body into the shape needed to do 17 laps at the pace needed!  That's OK I had a blast and look forward to this upcoming season without the pressure of trying to make an AMA grid.  My whole outlook and attitude better and I'm even more excited about doing well with AFM and ASMA and running up front.  You Gixxer's look out, here comes another fossil!

We missed Brian on this trip and thanks to Pat and Mike for the help.  Also missed my honey Sally.  She thought all the Ball Sac's were going and made plans.  She normally makes the Cali. trips, it's the NM ones I can't get her to come to.

Tom
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