nickhayman.com

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

We took all the gear down to our e-z-up at the hot pit wall, strategically situated between Yoshimura and Graves Yamaha, and set the bike up on the warmers. We stood by the trackside wall and watched the electric bike race – the TTXGP – which was fantastic.  Michael Barnes’ bike was super-fast, absolutely rocketing out of turn 11 across start-finish past his slower rival Shawn Higbee. In the end Barnie’s batteries got weak, Higbee stayed steady, and the tortoise beat the hare. We were all commenting on how the future was unfolding in front of our eyes: a 16yr-old girl wins a National, and silent, zero-emission racebikes were duking it out center-stage.

Next up was Supersport – Young Guns, Top Guns and a coupla oldies: me and my pit-buddy Roi Holster. Blood pressure was mercifully hovering at normal race level as we came round for the start. I was gridded as yesterday on row four, inside left, P13… not a great spot but I reminded myself I was there for fun so no biggie. As the lights came on I revved the engine, but just before they went out to start the race I opened the throttle a little more, the lights went out, I dumped the clutch and immediately wheelied the bike. I pulled the clutch back in a little, got ‘er down, clutch back out and punched the gas. Elbow to elbow with a couple of hard-chargers to my right, I had to keep left as we shot up the hill to turn 2. I saw the bikes near me were single-filing into turn 2, so I took a radical line on their outside left and passed about 4 guys going through the corner. As we charged through 3 and 3A I could see I’d regained a few places that I’d lost pulling that wheelie at the start, and I was running in roughly 10^th or 11^th place.

The race started to string out as the fast guys at the front motored away. I was holding steady behind #34 Robert Tinagero, and as the first few laps passed, I was trying everything to get around him. I dove underneath him driving over the hill from turn 5 into the Carousel, but he just cut across my nose forcing me to stand the bike up a bit to miss him. I showed him a wheel a couple of times under braking, but he wasn’t giving it up. After about 6 laps, I was wondering: “what would Rossi do” to beat him? So I decided to run right up his rear-end and pressure him into screwing up, else plan to pass him on the last lap on the brakes into turn 7 or 9. Suddenly he threw a leg out, I looked up and saw a red flag waving – Joey Pascarella had thrown his donut holes out of the pram again, this time highsiding his bike at the kink before start-finish, forcing the stoppage.

Back in the hot pit, we threw the bike on the tire warmers, added a splash o’ gas and also a 1/3 turn of rear ride height to try help me flip the bike from left to right in the turn 8-8A esses. The restart got called after a few minutes, and this time I used a little less throttle to achieve a great launch of the 848 and a good drive up the hill, again in about 10^th place.  After a lap of chasing the faster kids in front of me, the afore-mentioned Joey slipped past me at the entrance to turn 3, riding smoothly but not much faster than me – he’d had to restart the race from the back of the grid seeing as his crash had caused the red flag, as per the rules.

I started to slide my rear tire exiting corners and especially at the top of 2 and 3A – I guess that the first 9 laps was all I could get out of it in the way of good traction, and now it was about keeping it on two wheels. I found myself once again behind Tinagero #34, but this time I could not keep up, and he eased away while I practiced the art of sliding the rear tire, the rear end bobbing and weaving as the tire fought for traction. It was actually a lot of fun because it was fairly predictable, and as long as I hung off the bike properly as I fed in the throttle, it wasn’t getting out of control. I actually posted my fastest time of the weekend in the last few laps of the race – a 1:46.6 which I decided was not bad for riding someone else’s bike with minimal practice before racing.

* The view of Nick’s race on Sunday – #34’s back-end…       Photo Credit: GotBlueMilk

Back in the pits, Linda and Todd told me I’d finished 11^th – just outside the money, but all-in-all we were extremely happy with the weekend… coming home in one piece, a top-ten finish in the books, and stories to tell someone else’s grandkids. We cracked open a bottle of Moet White Star champagne I’d brought to celebrate, and while the rest of the paddock watched Eslick, Rapp and Cardenas battle it out in the Daytona Sport Bike race, we had a quiet few minutes in the pits savoring our weekend and sippin’ some very nice bubbly.

With many thanks to my friends for helping make a great weekend possible:- Pat Blackburn of Trackside Moto for the loan of the 848, Maestro Todd Chamberlin of Munroe Motors for doing so much the work for the love of racing, my friends at Ducati North America, Dave, Jim and Nikki of Catalyst Reaction Suspension, Scott and Eric from Arlen Ness Leathers, Kyle USA, HJC Helmets, TCX Boots, Senor James Siddall of Super Plush Suspension, Tim, Rick and gang at Leo Vince USA, Yoyodyne, Dennis, Terry and the crew at Sport Tire Services/Dunlop, Jim from Vehicle Systems, and of course pit boss extraordinaire Linda Jung.