So, at the last BB, I was reminded that I never did send out this race

report. It’s a bit late now, and the details get fuzzier every day, but I’d

rather get it out now before I head off to the races tomorrow morning ;-)
So, I was packing things up Friday the 25th to head up to the track. Summit

Point is a good 6 hour drive from my house, and more like 8 when you add in

traffic and one food stop and one or two fuel stops. I like to travel

comfortably when going that far, and I’ve long since decided that pushing

myself to go that far with one or no stops just isn’t worth it. Especially

not when you don’t manage to even get out of the driveway until 9PM :-( As it

turns out, I didn’t make it to the track until 4AM Saturday morning.

Fortunately, Summit Point isn’t like VIR, the track gates are open all night

long on race weekends (VIR closes that gates at midnight, so if you are

camping at the track like I do, then you have to be there before they close).
I didn’t get much sleep that night. Getting in at 4AM, I didn’t want to make

a lot of noise. Normally, when I camp at the track, I unload my trailer

(which is a 12′ x 7′ enclosed trailer), set up my bikes and seating area, then

pump up the air mattress and put it and the sleeping back in the trailer.

Well, since I didn’t want to wake everyone up, that was out of the question.

So, instead, I laid down in the front of the truck and tried to get some

sleep. Well, between 4AM when I got there and 7AM when it got to noisy to

sleep, I didn’t get 3 hours sleep because it was too uncomfortable ;-) I got

maybe an hour of sleep. I’m sure that doesn’t help a person on the track any.
This particular weekend wasn’t a WERA National event, like my last trip to

Summit Point. This was a regular WERA Sportsman Regional event. That changes

the schedule a little bit, seeing as how there is no endurance race. Instead,

you have the Solo20 races. These are 20 lap races that take roughly 30

minutes at most tracks. At Summit Point, because of track length, these races

are Solo18s instead.
So, I got out of the truck that Saturday morning and headed for the

registration trailer. After getting everything registered, I came back and

set up my pit area. This was the first race weekend where I could unload the

bikes and be ready to race. Prior to this weekend, I had spent *every*

*other* Saturday working on my bikes prior to the races, making me miss one or

more practices each time. This was a new feeling for me to be able to

actually be ready to go out during the first practice. So, I get both of the

bikes inspected at the tech shed, they both pass right off. I get suited up

in my leathers and get ready to head out on the track.
Practice actually went pretty well. My first time at Summit Point had been an

interesting weekend. Saturday had been the endurance race, and I had

crashed. After my crash, we repaired the bike, and I ended up going back out

in the race. However, I only got about 15 laps total in. That’s enough time

to get lightly acquainted with the track, but not enough to memorize it and

really get it down. Saturday had been raining. I ran one race on Saturday,

and one practice. But, running in the rain is *totally* different than

running in the dry. This time out, I was able to run 4 different practice

sessions. That gave me roughly another 25 laps on the track. It helped for

sure, I knew the track much better after practice than I did when I arrived.
Around noon they got the races started. First for me was the Lightweight

Solo18 race. I was in the second wave of the race, and I was fourth in that

wave going into turn one. The three people that got in front of me stayed

there :-( I kept things in reasonable shape for the remainder of the race,

and there wasn’t anything special about my performance. I got passed by a few

other people, and I never passed anyone. There were a lot of people that

didn’t manage to pass me either, so at least that’s one positive.
For those that might recall, in my last race report, I relayed the fact that I

crashed twice in one race :-( I wasn’t happy. The analysis I came up with

was that I wasn’t getting my lines right before I went fast and as a result, I

was going down. I made a decision that I wasn’t going to make stupid mistakes

any more, and going fast before you had your lines down is stupid in my

opinion. I stuck to that decision in this race. I didn’t let someone going

faster than me cause me to push myself faster than I was ready to go. The net

result is that I came in 9th out of 17 riders in this race. Squarely middle

of the pack, things could be worse ;-)
Next was the Hvyweight Solo18. I always let my first lap go easy while I warm

the tires up a little bit. I learned this habit from the Michelin Pilot Race

tires. They are *GREASY* when they are even a little bit cold. Once they are

warm they work much better, but on the way there you feel like you are racing

on ice ;-) So I let one or two people by as I took the first lap easy. Then

I started to turn the heat up a bit. It wasn’t long before I was thinking

“Gee, this heat seems awful lukewarm to me”. I was running one of the corners

as fast as the Mille could safely go. I had the rear end sliding around on

me, getting lose and acting weird. But, while I’m setting there sliding my

way around the corner, two guys on 600 class machine passed me on the inside.

So I’m wondering how they can go that fast when I’m at the limit of my rear

tire. That kept up for the rest of the race. I didn’t do so well in this

race. I finished 13th out of 15 or something like that (I can’t remember the

exact placing, what I remember is I was second to last). So when I got in

from that race, I was looking the rear tire over to see why I was doing soooo

poorly. Well, it didn’t take much to see what had happened, I *cooked* the

rear tire.
This is the first time I had actually used a tire up since I started racing,

but I had certainly done it to this one. I remember reading a tire test in a

magazine where they would rate how fast the race tires started to loose

traction. I had never realized what they were talking about before, now I

did.
Race tires have this nice property where they will slide softly to begin with

then a little more as you go faster then they will finally let go when you

really push them. Street tires are different, once you start sliding on

street tires, they simply let go and you’re on your back ;-) I’m not a tire

expert, but based on what I do know, what I saw on that tire, and what I know

of physics and friction, I think I know how race tires manage thier little

trick. I think the way they do it is by being very soft and having a

reasonable amount of rubber depth. The deeper that rubber is, the more flex

it has. When a slide starts, the rubber has been deformed by the forces on

the tire. It bounces back to it’s original position when the slide starts,

relieving some of the tension on the rubber. This gives the tire a chance to

actually catch on the asphalt again. Well, my theory is that as the tread

depth gets thinner on the tire, it has less and less ability to flex. With

less flex, the slides start coming earlier and faster. The tread on my tire

was reasonable when I went out for practice that morning, but sometime along

the way it started getting too thin to keep up. The wear on the tire is

exponential then. The more worn the tire is, the faster you keep wearing it

off. By the time I pulled in at the end of that race, my right side of my

rear tire was worn to the point that it basically had no tread left. Now I

know what it means to cook a tire ;-)
Sunday, I get awoken by Fred in his normal good humor as he yells through my

trailer door something about Jessica having a hard job if she has to get me

out of bed. He had made it up during the middle of the night Saturday night

and set up his spot next to mine. So, I filled him in on the previous days

events, as I had him look over that tire on the back of the Mille. He agreed

with me that it was shot. I was going to go ahead and run the sprint Sunday

on it though, to avoid buying a new set of tires that weekend, but he

convinced me that would be a bad idea. So, I got to work on the Mille, trying

to get the new tires installed. As it turned out, I wanted to try out a set

of the Pirelli race tires instead of the Michelins I had been running, but

Trackside Racers Supply, the normal Pirelli vendor at the track wasn’t there

this weekend. So, I went with the new Bridgestone BT58r tires. These tires

have a more pointed profile on the front tire that is supposed to help the

bike turn in quicker. The side effect to a tire that wants to turn in quicker

is that it wants to go straight less. I found out just how much less during

the races Sunday.
Due to the tire change (which took a long time because the tire vendors air

compressor blew right after I brought my tires up, and since he was the only

tire vendor there that weekend, he had to run to WalMart in Summit Point and

buy a new compressor before he could change my tires) and some unforeseen

track issues (the weekend before, during some car races, someone had wrecked

their car and gotten killed, this weekend there were some officials from

somewhere at the track doing an investigation, and while that was happening we

had to stay off the track, which cut into our practice time pretty heavily and

resulted in the race officials combining several of the practice groups

together, including I got moved from the third practice group on the Mille

into the first group, while the SV was moved from the fifth group to the

third) I was looking pretty bad as far as practice time was concerned. I was

most concerned about getting some practice time on the Mille since it was

going to have new tires. As it turned out, all I could get in the Mille’s

practice session was about three laps because I didn’t get out until it was

almost over. Putting the tires back on, combined with delays in getting them

back from the vendor, combined with having my practice session moved up just

kept me from getting it all done in time. The other side effect of the

investigation was that we only got one round of practice sessions instead of

the normal two. So, when I went out to the HvyWeight Twins race that

afternoon, it was without hardly any experience on the Bridgestone tires.
It didn’t take much time on the track for me to develop an opinion about the

new tires. Even if they did stick to the pavement well, they made my Mille

shake worse than a 90 year old man’s hands after sex. The Mille comes with a

steering damper, but it isn’t adjustable. Before the tire switch, the bike

was occasionally a bit on the twitchy side, and several times we (Fred, Wrenn,

and myself) thought that we might like to be able to add one or two clicks of

damping on the steering damper. With the new BT58r’s though, I needed about 6

more clicks of damping! Coming out of turn 10 at Summit, I’m doing about

100mph, I’m just by the rumble strips, I open the throttle wide open as I

straighten the bike up. Right at the end of the rumble strip there is a

slight ripple in the asphalt. Between the fact that my bike will make the

front end very light when you open the throttle up at 100mph and the little

ripple in the asphalt and the twitchy new tires, my bike tried to go into a

tank slapper at 100mph. It was enough to make me pucker so hard that I just

about sucked the seat into my butt. A few laps later, I had the same thing

happen at turn 9. I had the same thing happen 2 or 3 times coming out of turn

3. All in all, the bike became so twitchy that I had to slow things down just

to keep my shorts clean. I didn’t do all that well in this race either,

although I didn’t do bad. I finished 5th, out of I think 9 or so racers.
Later that afternoon I ran the D-Super race on the SV. In the D-Super class,

the SV is the undisputed horsepower king, so you can usually trounce on all

the smaller bikes, and you only have to worry about other SVs. At the start

of the race, I got a good start. But, I was on those Michelin tires again, so

that first lap saw me getting passed by about 3 or 4 riders. After that I got

myself up to speed. I wasn’t getting passed any more (at least not by other

novices, although I might have gotten passed by a few experts still).

Unfortunately, that’s about the time that they red flagged the race :-(

Someone had gone down in turn 10 and they had to pull out the ambulance to

pick them up. Fortunately, the rider wasn’t seriously hurt and he only got a

ride to the pits instead of to a hospital. We all rode back out to the grid

positions after about a 5 minute break. That meant I was heading back out

with fairly warm tires. They got the race underway again, and I got a decent

start. I ended up middle of the pack into turn 1. As I was running around

the track this time, I was holding my position fairly well. There were 6

people in my class ahead of me. The leaders were really pulling it out and

away, but I was catching the people in 5th and 6th. I had been catching

glimpses of both of them as I went around the track, and each time they would

be a little bit closer to me. I was getting about caught up with them, they

were only one turn ahead of me by now. As I’m watching the track going into

turn 5, I catch a glimpse of them going into turn 6. As I’m coming out of

turn 5, I catch a glimpse of them going into turn 6. I immediately think

“Damn I’m fast!”. Then I immediately starting thinking realistically “Damn,

they slowed down!” It becomes much more apparent as I noticed that they

weren’t really going into turn 6 anymore, they were more like laying in turn 6

now. Then I start thinking “Damn, they slowed down a lot!!”, which stands to

reasons since they were no longer rolling, instead they were sliding. Well, I

guess they were still rolling actually, just not on their wheels, more like

barrel rolls now, and those just aren’t as fast.

They were headed off into the dirt now as a matter of fact. Once they left

the asphalt, I had a pretty good idea that I was sure to be able to pass them

;-)
They red flagged the race again, but this time we were over half done so it

was considered a completed race instead of being another restart. Since those

two took each other out, I ended up finishing in 5th.
All in all, I was fairly happy with that weekend. I didn’t have any stellar

finishes, but things were getting better towards the end and I didn’t ever go

down. That’s a first for me, a race weekend where I didn’t go down at least

once ;-)
Now I’ve covered that race weekend, and I’m ready for VIR tomorrow. Oops,

that would be today now ;-)