I had such an awesome time! The track surface is awesome, but just like @Hyperdyne said, the surface needed heat. I literally kept lowering the temps on my warmers to get them to more closely match what temp the rear tire was when I came off track and the tire wear was much better. By Saturday I was making it through whole races without ripping my SC1's apart (I'm also on one of those 1000cc piss missiles) I do have one major gripe.... Gridding for the Open/A Superstock Races. For Saturday they were alledgedly set by when you registered to race? Which is weird, but ok. So I had to start P15 or something which wasn't a major issue, but the problem was that there were 2-3 rows in front of me where the racers where 5-7 seconds off the pace. It was really kinda sketchy out there for half the race.. I ended up finishing P8 or 9th.. The major gripe was that on Sunday I somehow NOW had to start from P20th? I don't understand this. Was it now based off points? This race was an absolute shit show, lol dudes just eating shit everywhere because they were making risky moves trying to get around slower riders. I almost didn't make the restart because I had made it from P20 all the way up to P8 and then I was gunna have to restart AGAIN from P20. (I know it would have been a whole ordeal to re-grid everyone for the re-start, so I'm not mad really I was just smoked) @Mongo is there any chance that A/Superstock can be gridded by qualifying times instead of whatever it was gridded by this weekend? At least for the experts? F1 and A/Superbike grid by Q times and I don't think anyone that races A/Superstock would have any issue if that class was had grids set by qualifying. It just really seems much safer to do it that way. On Saturday the expert grid had 2 waves, and some of the fastest guys on track had to start from the 2nd wave. That's all though. LOL I had a blast and can't wait until next year.
My first time there. Got in Thursday evening and sat in a ton of traffic trying to get through the gate and into the paddock. Wouldn’t have been so bad if I knew where I was going, but I got a spot. My only real complaint is the large number of people riding around on bikes all night that did not appear associated with anyone in the paddock. There should be a cutoff on the general spectator traffic or if that’s not possible, quite hours where I don’t need to hear some annoying piece of crap two stroke at 10 or 11pm that’s so loud I can’t have a conversation. And I thought I couldn’t hate anyone more than people with loud generators….
It wouldn’t have mattered…. Those stunters on the Harleys in the Demo area started doing shit at 1AM back there… And they were in a closed lot LOL
It was pretty much typical VDM from 15-20 years ago this year. We were talking to a sheriff before the awards ceremony Sunday and he said the road race paddock was the least of their worries. There was some crazy stuff going on outside our fence. It's a different type of event than most of us are used to. Normally road racing is the main event, but at VMD we are just one ring in a giant 4 ring circus.
I practiced all day Friday then raced all day Saturday with nary a problem. Then I headed over to the Louisville Vintage Motorworks party Saturday night and crashed the Grom doing beer can slalom. Drinking was involved. They did give my son and I cool shirts since we're the only road racers in the crew. One day I'll teach him how to button it.
The grids were not done the way I wanted to by any stretch. Had a computer glitch I fought all weekend and I apologize for that, all on our end and at least that specific issue will not happen again. They should have been done by points like normal for all WERA only classes and by entry order Saturday then Saturday finish order on Sunday for all VMD championship classes. I'll make sure that's how it works next year. On q sessions - same issue as always with superstock, without a parc ferme and examination deal I don't know who is on what bikes and if that bike is the one they're running in the class or not. The two waves went quick and the fast guys got up front safely, 6 laps there isn't a ton of time but it's enough. Oddly enough we had way more crashes in practice than racing so while the grids were not correct I can't blame them for the riders making bad choices.
I want to say thanks to all of you for working with us and bearing with the issues I had on the computer end of things. Between the racers and our great officials everything outside of the tower went as perfectly as you could ever want with more than 200 racers in the paddock. My stress level was off the charts but it was better than it could have been because of all of you.
Great event by WERA as usual. My only gripe was some of the lightweight classes were combined and kind of limited how many classes you could enter and 4 out of 5 classes were back to back. (may not be wording that very well) Schedule has to a PITA to put together for the event but it would be nice if there was a little space between a few of those lightweight events.
This event is for the vintage bikes - so yeah we are light on LW classes and will always be so especially with the age limit at the track. As for back to back - you're the one running an sv in everything possible but I will look at it for next year.
The hard part was running the TZ and the SV. Unfortunately the TZ broke during practice but point is well taken. Running V7HW and F2 is tough when they race at the same time. I also realize i'm probably one of the very few with that problem.
Just remind me again next April/May as that's when I start doing the VMD schedule. No promises but I'll try.
