ZDR Does Summit Point June 2011 After a rocky weather start to the year WERA had a perfect weekend at Summit Point. Early in the week it had gotten ugly hot – and we feared 100 degree temps for race day, but the weather broke and we were greeted with mild temperatures in the 80s. Even with the presence of George Mood the forecast rain confined itself to the overnight hours – so all was good. Saturday practice was spent getting familiar with the yet again new paving and the new ripples in high speed turn 3. Once comfortable that the front wasn’t going to skip and push I discovered that the corner felt best at full chat. I lined up beside Scott McKee for the V6 Lightweight race and focused on my launch. I got a strong launch and Scott wheelied, letting me get the drop on him into Turn 1. Now, this may not seem special, but the boy has 30+ HP on me, and generally when that FZR gets into the groove he will come rocketing past before T1, so I had a surprised little grin in my helmet. I laid down a decent first lap and as I exited T10 onto the front straight I waited for that familiar banshee howl – and there he was zipping past. In just the front straight he probably opened almost a second on me. I kept the gap a reasonably steady for the next 5-6 laps, and then he slowly eased away bit by bit for the last couple. All in all an uneventful race and a second place finish. The next day dawned cool and damp. After practice we had a long period of downtime until our first race, which was race 12 or Clubman. On the sighting lap I was sizing up a new competitor – some guy on a big bore KTM super-motard. As he wheelied halfway down the front straight while out accelerating me I thought “uh-oh”. I have to admit to really disliking racing against the motards , partly because they can be so damn fast but mostly because of their very different lines and tendency to change lines suddenly – I have damn near T boned Pete Cline too many times. I wanted to try to get out front and get a gap so I nailed the start hard and laid down a couple hot laps. When I glanced back he was nowhere to be seen. I still don’t know what happened – I suspect he broke or crashed. With open track ahead I focused on hitting all my marks and keeping speed up and finished in an unchallenged first place. I should probably clarify that I was unchallenged by another rider – near the end of the race I suffered a mechanical problem that caused the rear to get very loose – I had a major moment when the rear stepped out big exiting ten (this is not a common experience on a stock Honda Hawk, I might add). I raced again in race 14 so I hustled back to the pits and began wrenching. God bless Quentine Mise for coming to my aid and coming o my pit to help me get the bike ready. I went out at the last minute and gridded up beside Scott McKee again for D Superbike. I got a good start, but this time was more typical – Scott also got a good start and that killer bumblebee of his came screaming past me into one. Not sure of my mechanical fix I was a bit hesitant on the first lap, though I did stick a wheel up under Scott in T5 and he chopped me hard enough to send me up on the curbing to escape. Boy don’t give it up easily. I spent the rest of the race entertaining myself dicing with SVs, including an inside pass in T 10 on the white flag lap that had me knee down apexing in the middle of the track (hmm, hope I can make this work) and (I think) beating the surely annoyed SV to the line by a fraction. I rolled back to the pits for a quick splash of gas and water and then went out for my last race, D Superstock. I gridded up solo (no ther DSS competitors) between expert and novice SV packs. I basically used this race to see how many white plate SVs I could get by. It seems there are always a couple yellow plate SVs who come blazing through the expert pack – often a little scarily. By the last two laps my old arse was getting tired (fighting bronchitis takes it out of you) and I slowed down enough that one of the SVs got back by. I rolled into post race tech and they said “where’s your transponder?” Good question- it was on there. I went to timing and scoring and they told me it quit scoring after one lap of the D Superbike race (race 14). They recognized it enough to manually score me for race 17, but I hadn’t noticed it and nobody from WERA apparently thought to let me know (like as I got off the track from race 14 at post race tech). The Race Director was in an unsympathetic mood and so to get scored for my second in D Superbike and my first in D Superstock was going to cost me $200 “for not running my transponder”. I declined that offer. While that left me a mite disappointed the fine folks at WERA and MARRC joined together and found my transponder, which had fallen off in the T1 braking zone (now that is hard braking!) and got it back to me, saving me $450. Molto grazie. All in all a good time was had. Thanks to WERA, MARRC, Quentin and Conti, Robin and all my racing friends and competitors.
Mike- Just want to tell ya that I always look for your race reports after a WERA weekend. Keep up the good work!
