When Did You Decide To Race?

The day my dad told me I was going racing. It was the day after I shot out the neighbor's windows with a BB gun. Started with BMX and then motocross but I was too skinny and small. That led to dirt track . . .

 

Sounds like a Boby Bauxbaum (sp?) story.

I liked riding with Bobby, he was a fun cat and always very nice to Bonnie and me and the staff.

 

I've learned how to go faster safely, I was thinking about the 600 and 1000 class, I'll give it a shot.

 

Na, I had the pleasure of doing it at the Pocono F-USA track with Dave Aldana teaching the class.

It's amazing how much I thought that was a 'real' motorcycle racetrack back then. Today you couldn't drag me there to ride.

 

Got my lst bike in '94, '92 GSXR 750.
Became a regular at the local dealer/shop (very small at the time, now a big dealer with (2) stores.
A guy that worked there and his friend, used to race and were friends with Kurt Hall. So they would talk racing and pointed me in the right direction as to what I needed/wanted for my bike.

Started meeting on Sundays at the shop at noon with these former racers and go for backroad rides.
After a lowside on the street and being able to 'hang' with these guys on the backroads, they had me convinced to go to my lst trackday at Putnam. Was hooked before I even got to the track.

Went north to Grattan and took the Team Chicago school. Got my lst license with GLRRA.
I was out of racing for several years, but have been back in it the past 3.
Mainly doing the Endurance series and a few trackdays.

 

I started way back when I was 43 (I'm 45 now). I had been doing track days for about three years and said to my buddy "My bike's eligible for V7. Why don't we go get our race licenses?" It seemed otherworldly at the time.

I only do track days now because NJMP is an hour from my house. I'd give those up if WERA started racing there (hint, hint).

 

1998 got my license. after watching old guys dice it up....i knew i was better than they were. FAIL! Had been street riding about a year.

i know i dont need to say it, but some of my best friends have come from the track. some of the coolest people on the planet.

 

Buncha tickets, a couple wrecked bikes and a few lost friends.

One track day and two weeks later we started at Tally in Feb '07.

I oiled the track in the RS
Stamler crashed on pit-out
Sloan went off through T1 in the mock race
Danny crashed in T3
I jumped and got meatballed in our first race. Buck was my pit attendant!
Hazan made it through with no issues

Theres nothing like it, and I miss it. I will be back on pavement!:up:

 

I watched an early ERA (before WERA) race at Milwaukee and watched a couple of guys on CB400Fs ( Ed Key and Phil Schmidt) beat all the RDs. Since I had a CB400f, too I wired it and went to My first race in 1977 at Summit Point. The first rider's school I went to, I was teaching a couple of years later.

Ken

 

That is similar to how mine went...

I was at work around the end of 2006 and picked up a magazine with a guy racing on the cover and thought "now that shit looks like fun". Before then, i had never even sat on a motorcycle (of any kind, dirt or street).

I talked to a buddy of mine and he suggested i get a Gixxer 600 (not the wisest bike to start on, but i was going off the advice of others and didn't know any better).

My buddy showed me how to start it, which levers to use for shifting or braking etc. Then i took the MSF course and started riding.

Summer of '07 i did my first track day. Then in the next year i did several more track weekends and i started racing in '08.

 

I met him for the first time three days after that crash.

 

I would like to give it a try my self but in the 600 class....

I wander where my bike would fall in terms of classification with the mods that I have done to it?.... mmmm...

and like others here have mention, I was waching a WSBK race with Colin Edwards holding off Haga in 00

I done only track days since 03 and allway wanted to do some races(I have dream about it, few times...lining up to the starting grid), but with family responsabilities, cant never get around it.... hope this year or next

 

Good question?

 

Rode dirt/street for 6 years...bunch of my friends started doing trackdays in 06 and raved about how awesome it was. I didn't see the need to pay someone to ride, but gave in after finding a cheap TD at Little Tally in mid-07 - which lead to 5 more TDs that year. Fast forward to now, after working for two years as a Control Rider, those same friends (and more) just finished their second season last year. I beat my "need to get here to start racing" lap time in October, so I'm getting my license in April

 

I was doing pit crew duty for a bunch at friends running an R75/5 in a WERA Endurance at Bryar Motorsports park. Seems they ran out of riders at the 3 hours mark and they told me to take the bike out. Umm, sorry guys, no license.......

SO, a while later I got the WERA licnese at Pocono.

Yeah, it rained boith days for both the Endurance race and license weekend. Go figure.

 

I did a trackday in '99 on my F2. I was hooked. I bought an FZR400 and started racing in 2000. Due to health and then money and then health and money, getting a lot of track time was not possible. In 2010, I did five weekends and actually did somewhat okay, after a tough start with my health.

I started with trackdays, but in recent years, I've grown tired of the "bench racing" and bravado at trackdays. With racing, it seems like the competition ends on the track and then it's time for beer and good times with folks you don't get to see as often as you wish. Like someone else said, racing isn't about the competition to me, it's about improving myself. And since you're with similar riders, you can learn to build up speed faster.

 

Some guy named Aaron Brown convinced me to take up racing while I was looking to buy track plastics for my street bike to try out trackdays...
well that never happened.
I did a season of racing before ever doing a trackday
this was back in 2006
I wouldn't do it any other way, I love WERA

 

I started 4 seasons ago at the ripe old age of 43. Had been going to Shannonville to spectate for 15 yrs. prior,always wanted to race just never had balls enough to jump in. Had a guy come in the shop that had just moved to the area, he was racing there, we got to be friends and he started working on me to do it. At about the same time I had a guy that I went to high school with die completely unexpectedly and it got me thinking "you know if you want to do something you should do it cause you could go at any time". So that was enough to tip me over the edge, rolled my 400 Bandit into the shop and started stripping all the street stuff off it.

I've never done a track day, mainly because it's hard enough to be able to get away for a race wkend.

My only regret is that I didn't start alot sooner. Have met alot of good people and made some great new friends at the track.

 

My racing obsession started with a bad crash on the street. I had been riding for 3 months, I was young and dumb riding like "I knew what I was doing". Had a close call with a telephone pole. Decided then and there that if I was going to continue to ride my bike on the street I would take a proper motorcycle course. I ended up doing the FAST Riding school at Shannonville Motorsports Park.

That led to my first track day the following weekend and I've never looked back. After my first season of riding on the street I canceled my insurance and converted my 600RR into a track only bike. The street was a joke in comparison to riding on the track. I was doing about 10-15 track days per season from 2002-2007. In 2007 I entered my first race and well... the rest is history

I've met some of my best friends racing. Although I've stepped down from racing in 2009 I have a full season of trackdays planned for 2011!!

 

good ol' bobby buxbaum, aka, brknbnz. he voluntarily withdrew his participation on this forum after being so well received tho' it's possible he was banned for life.
otherwise, yeah, he's good people. i've always liked that guy...no bs about him.

he was a mentor for me. it wasn't that he taught me anything about riding, it was everything else. every time he and i had a differing of opinion relative to bikes, etc., it was just a matter of time before his opinion was validated.
for the benefit of the other beebs, this guy has been involved with bikes for decades. he has some stuff featured in ienatch's "powers of the poconos" articles.
"that's a really fast 750!"
"it's a 600."


i'd tried to hook up with him for some trackdays but, he's been riding with that other org that's dominating njmp.
i have no luck dealing with those people.