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My apologies for the slow posting of this last entry – work has a nasty habit of rearing its head and getting in the way of more fun stuff like racing and writing… Nick.

Second Race Day of AMA Infineon “West Coast Moto Jam” Double-header

Sunday dawned bright and clear, and was an altogether different prospect than Saturday. We’d enjoyed an extra hour of sleep, because the morning practice schedule put us on track at 9:30am instead of 8am thank goodness. And when we got to the track and set the pit up, we found that the intense nervousness we’d felt on Saturday was gone – we were now pro-fessional AMA racers, and we had it all under control. I was about to say to Todd that we’d already met all our goals for the weekend, when I realized there was in fact one more to fulfill: bring the bike home in one piece.

The twenty-minute warm-up practice was simply about kickstarting brain and body, and testing the yet-lighter rear spring we’d thrown on the bike the night before. The lighter spring made the whole bike feel more compliant this morning, without making the bike wallow around at all, and I came in mid-session to raise the rear ride height a touch, which complemented the softer spring nicely.

So now we were ready – just 18 laps of safe racing and we would go home feeling like champions.

* Nick leads Supersport rivals, sometime on Saturday – Photo Credit: Brian J Nelson

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Race Day!

I was rudely interrupted at 5:15am by my alarm. A quick bodycheck revealed only minor stiffness and no headache or hangover, which presaged well for the day. After loading the truck with goodies assembled from a quick stop-over visit to Munroe the previous evening, and the requisite flyby a local coffee shop, we arrived just before 7am at the track, which was covered in foggy cloud or cloudy fog. We set-up the pit and got the bike on the tire warmers, leaving on the 18 lap qualifying tires from yesterday, as I was deliberately going to test the new rear suspension spring only and not try to improve my qualifying time. I’ve been around the race track enough to know that you can’t go fast when you don’t feel like it, so you choose those times to try different lines or suspension settings or something, and allow yourself that you will be more in the mood to go fast at another time.

* The principal suspects – Nick, Linda and Todd

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Practice and Qualifying

We were keeping to a relaxed schedule this morning because the show only started around noon, and I needed to change my attitude from mechanic to racer and that meant inner focus and calm. We got to the track around 9am, unpacked all the gear, and went to the official AMA rider and crew chief meeting at 10am. Some of the AMA top brass were on hand to throw out a positive report on how hard everyone were trying to make the series work, and to acknowledge the racers and teams for all their efforts. At one point we were told we were the “stars” and “the future of the sport” – and I was thinking they forgot about the “past of the sport”, oh well.

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Today was a long day. It started at 8am at Kragens – you know where to go – picking up more cans of red paint to finish the bodywork.

While Todd was polishing his handiwork off, I pulled the clutch out and put in a fresher clutch plate pack. On the dry clutch engines this only take 15-20 minutes, but on the wet clutch 848 it took an hour and a half.

I then ran around a bit buying stick-on race numbers and some white paint to paint on the number plates. I went home to get my truck, my riding gear and my tool box, and when I got back, Todd was beaming like a new father and the bike looked good enough to race a national.

We loaded her up, grabbed the boxes of spares, chemicals, tire warmers, extension cords, generator, and other paraphernalia, and I headed out.

I took the bike down to tech, which was pretty straightforward once I got the required Dunlop, AMA and Sunoco decals placed on my belly pan. It was nice to see quite a few friendly faces in the paddock, from back in the day when we were doing the Pro-Thunder series 8-10 years ago. I mentioned I was racing in Supersport to a coupla old pals and I think “dumb-founded” is an accurate description of their faces.

Todd and I walked out to the entrance gate to get our credentials at the AMA registration hut, then back to the pit to get the wheels off and down to the nearby Dunlop trailer to get fitted with the “spec” Dunlop 211GP-A tires everyone in Supersport and Daytona Superbike has to use this year.

Finally we took the forks off and over to Jim at the Catalyst Reaction trailer to install the tricky new Ohlins NIX cartridges that just came in yesterday, meanwhile Todd and I changed the shock spring while we were waiting – not a quick task on this model unfortunately.

Got back to the shop by about 9:30pm, dropped off a coupla unwanted items, picked up my darling Performance Friction brake pads that came in just this afternoon, and got home by 10:15pm exhausted and ready for a bath and bed after writing the race-log – can’t skip the log!

A proud dad – Todd and the 848 now ready to race

View of the plush Munroe Motors pit area, front forks away getting gussied up

Starting to get excited about the weekend. Had to “calm myself down” a couple of times to stay focused on the job at hand. More goodies were showing up – the new CRC bodywork, a coupla items for my 999, and a new 30mm NIX fork cartridge kit from Ohlins. I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon creating and sending out the Munroe newsletter about the upcoming weekend, and got some quick responses from friends wishing me luck. After work, Todd and I got stuck into mounting up the new bodywork, and then painting it with rattle cans from Kragens in their “Super Red II” color.

We unfortunately ran out of paint prematurely, so we’re going to have to finish the painting at 8am tomorrow morning when Kragens opens. We left about 10pm again, coughing and hacking from the acetone and paint fumes, even though we were wearing respirators.

Todd musing on how he got talked into this stupidity

Put in a pretty decent day of work work at work today – which I try to avoid whenever possible as being bad for my mental health. I ran over to welding wizard Dennis to get a shop 848 radiator fixed that had sprung a small leak that I’m gonna take for spare, but otherwise I didn’t do much on the bike. That evening, Todd and I fitted up the 17” stock wheels, I deglazed the rotors in preparation for the new PF pads while Todd changed the oil and filter and safety-wired the bike up, and we were through by about 10pm.

Woke up for an early phone conference with Zoe, who was staying in Pat’s RV up at Thunderhill and could better gauge the likelihood of a nice day. It really didn’t look that great, and I wasn’t that bothered to go, so I declined on the 5 hour roundtrip.

One thing I’ve found being a racer again is that when you’re racing at track ”A”, getting some practice at track “B” is not that helpful – you have to change your bike set-up, and more importantly it confuses your dreams and visualizations about what you’re doing on track.

Racing is such a mental game – it’s critical to create a solid belief system about you and your bike, and to have a clear picture on what you’re doing at every point around the track, and what you want to do. Therefore it’s best if you focus on one track at a time.
So I went to the shop, unloaded the gear and got back to work.
Firstly I took the bike out on a test ride – San Jose Avenue, then up and down o’Shaughnessy, and back to the shop on 101. The 848 doesn’t have the midrange thrust of my 999, but it pulls pretty damn hard when you rev her out, and she had no running glitches, clutch or gearbox abnormalities.

Back at the shop I spent the afternoon on the phone to my favorite suppliers and friends, lining up all manner of trickery… a variety of suspension components from Jim at Catalyst Reaction, some spare wheels from AFM & Isle o’ Man racer Craig McLean, emergency spare bodywork available from Jim Lubinator at Vehicle Systems, the best brake pads in the world from Performance Friction, a new bodywork set from Catalyst Race Composites, and the list goes on. Most of these guys are used to racers and their last minute needs, so my to-do list was getting handled without too much anxiety.

Zoe came by the shop at the end of the afternoon and dropped off Pat’s stock 848 wheels and the stock intake runners – the list was getting shorter!

A bit later I hit the gym for a good workout, 35 minutes non-stop cardio with weights to mimic the race distance and another 45 minutes of Nick regimen freestyle weights and crunches as usual. I’m gonna be fit …but I could be fitter.

Stock 17″ rims, ready to mount up