Holy Frozen Dingleberries - ZDR Does VIR

They Laughed, They Cried, They Froze Their Asses Off
ZDR Does VIR March 2009

Ahh yes, spring, and a young man’s thoughts turn to love. A middle aged man’s thoughts turn to roadracing in 38 degree temperatures. Odd, that.

Zero Dollars Racing packed up in a cold rain and headed south for the annual season opener at VIR, a seasonal crapshoot in which you might get sunny and 70s or snow. This year the dice tumbled and ended up balanced on their edges – cold as hell in the mornings and sunny and semi-warm (50s) in the afternoons.

The Friday track day was used to blow some cobwebs off, sort some mechanicals (loose steering stem bearings make the hog pen bracing) and remind oneself that no matter how rigorous your training you ain’t ready for the track.

We started Saturday morning with fresh tires and low 30s. Ummm, roadracing. The tires were losing temperature the longer you were on track – great! The good news was that the grids were quite full despite the economic conditions, with 3 waves of expert 600s in the solo. The bad news was that very full grids with a cold track and rusty racers meant a fairly high level of carnage, with some potentially serious injuries. This meant that by the afternoon the sprint races were reduced to 4 laps.


I gridded my trusty old Hawk up for my first race, Vintage 6 lightweight, next to perennial competitor and foil Scott McKee on his FZR God only knows what. With a fresh motor. Crap. Knowing that to stick with Scott I needed a good launch I concentrated on setting the revs right. The 1 board turned sideways, the flag flew, and I executed a perfect clutch-throttle combination. In neutral. After the entire pack had streamed past I wheelied the first three gears and, somewhat impolitely I am afraid, passed the entire pack except for Scott into and through turn 1. I was, shall we say, not entirely pleased with myself. That first lap gave Scott about a 5 second gap that he managed quite nicely, thank you very much, and while I closed it up to 4 seconds at the finish 4 laps gave no opportunity to recover. The only consolation was that the 3rd place rider was another 24 seconds back. The bike had run poorly, hacking and spitting and lacking juice. Back in the pits I discovered the carb had popped out of the boot for the front cylinder. Ahh, there’s the rub. Who knows, with fuel in both cylinders maybe I could have closed the gap to 3 seconds!

Saturday night dropped into the 20s(!), and Sunday morning was a bit bracing. Fortunately nothing had frozen. My first race was D Superbike, gridded with Lightweight Twins Superstock. No sign of Scott, but there was plenty to concentrate on. Grid marshals razzed me about my previous start, and I readied myself to show them, galdarn it. And again popped the clutch in neutral. Aargh. I entered turn 1 mired in the back of a 26 bike melee. I was now formally and officially pissed the F off, and proceeded to slice through the pack. I think I passed 8 bikes on the first lap. In doing so, the first time around into the hog pen I got pushed off line as I passed two guys on the entry and ran wide – on the gator teeth, knee down, eyeing the mud on the outside of the gators and on the gas. If I was going to crash it was going to be WFO and leaned over instead of standing up and running off at 110 mph. I ran on the gators from mid corner all the way to the exit, and somehow managed to keep it up. Scared the living crap out of me. I kept on keeping on, and passed about half of the SV pack that had been gridded ahead of us, finishing 3rd in my race and 9th of 26 over all. Chad Hinton on his rocketship 800 Duc and Corey Rech on his Aprilia motard, both in my class, finished well up the SV pack ahead of me. I would like to note that any expert SV rider that gets passed by a Hawk pulling a botched start from the second wave needs to pick up the pace.

Next up was D SuperStock, gridded with the Lightweight Twins Superbikes. This time I somehow managed to start in gear, and found it a much more satisfying experience. That allowed me to stay on Corey’s heels for a while, but with his bike’s 30+% horsepower advantage and 100 pounds less weight the result was pretty well preordained. We again sliced our way through the SV pack that started ahead of us, Corey finishing 10th of 26 overall and 1st in our class, with me 12th overall and 2nd in class. Brandon Cretu on his motard chased me the entire race but managed to hold him off by a second at the finish. The air temp had been cooling during the race, and towards the end the tires cooled to the point that they got very squirrely. Imagine – tires getting colder while you race. Nonetheless on my last lap I turned my best time of the event, a 1.43:22. OK for a lil’ ol Hawk, I suppose.

My last race up was Clubman, gridded with the 125s. Pretty much the same story. Corey and I cleared off from the pack and diced with the 125s (I’m sure Kracget was worried about my coming after him), finishing about 30 seconds ahead of 3rd place.

So all in all a chilly but pleasant weekend. No wins, but 3 second place finishes and a 3rd, and no crashes on my part. Kurt Kearcher did crash his brand new Duc 800 when someone went down in front of him on the exit of T1, braking his collarbone and damaging his bike badly (tweaked frame) – thinking of ya big guy. As always many thanks to Quentin, the Speedwerks crew and Jon Hovey’s Performance Cycle (heal up dude). Also thanks to Stickman for help with tires with weekend. Mike, Dan – thanks for hanging with us. And as always to Robin.

 

So I guess the Steering Head Bearing adjustment worked? I forgot to ask.