AFM 103 – Greg McCullough

Quite a weekend.  How can things be so much fun, and so hard at the same time?

Saturday started early, with registration and tech inspection starting at 6:30am.  These are some early, long, full days.  Oddly, I slept rather well the night before.  In fact, I slept well all 3 nights I was out there.  The head cold I was fighting the whole time probably had some effect there, knocking the energy out of me enough to sleep through the nerves.

The morning was much like Friday, full of open practice sessions, just learning last minute things on the track.  To be honest, i don’t think Friday or Saturday’s practice did much for me, given my cold-induced mental slowness.  I wasn’t focusing on practicing anything, and just doing easy laps to engrain the track in my head, and avoid being stuck in the pits stressing about my first race at 3:45pm.

The inherent risks in the sport came to bite early in the day.  In one of the late morning practices, my friend Tom crashed in front of me with a bad high side, launching him over the bike and rolling a few times on the asphalt before ending up off-track.  He was ambulanced out, and as I found out later, fractured a few bones in his spine and had a serious concussion.  He’s home now, and on his way to a slow mend, but it shook me hard at the time.  Tom doesn’t crash.  He runs track days.  He’s one of the most careful fast riders I know.  At the time, I didn’t know the diagnosis of his accident, and it was hard to think about going racing and having fun at it with the ambulance driving away.  Deep breath.  No time to think about these things.  Ride safely, quickly, as planned.

Then it was race time.  3 novice (aka clubman)  races to be run – lightweight, middleweight, heavyweight, in that order.  My bike is relatively low powered, at about 80hp, and qualifies for lightweight, but I also signed up for middleweight, to get some extra practice.  I’d be up against faster bikes, but it wouldn’t be too ridiculous.

Race 1: I had a decent start from the second row, and was around 5th place until the 3rd turn, when most of the guys in front of me all crashed out, causing me to check up a bit to avoid the melee.  That left me chasing Oliver, a turn or two ahead, as expected.  That dude’s the fastest novice rider I’ve seen.  I closed the gap a bit, then he pulled away again.  After a number of 2:01 laps, we finished in roughly the same position as the first lap.  2nd place isn’t a bad start.

Race 2: Against the bigger bikes, with very little time to take a breath, we were off again.  The race was red flagged immediately, due to an incident at the start which required an ambulance run.  15 minutes of down time and a little water helped a ton.  On the restart, I got a good jump, again from the second row, and was about 5th place into turn 2.  The 6 laps that followed were an exercise in consistent riding.  On the longer straights, I had to get a good drive out of the corner, and brake late in the following corner to compensate for the stronger bikes chasing me.  I finished 7th, against a field of 36 bikes.

I spent Saturday evening with a bunch of amazingly hospitable other racers, drinking beer, eating good bbq, and generally bs-ing about motorcycles and nothing at all.  This crowd is awesome.  They’ll give you the shirt off their backs, or in my case, offer their RV showers, food, beer, water, moral support, cheering, use of their pit bikes, and anything else I wanted.  Love these folks.  I came away from the day with a new perspective on how to live one’s life to the fullest.

Now for the races that mattered.  After a brief round of practice sessions, the all-day lineup of races kicked off with only a short break for lunch.   This wasn’t going to be a fun jaunt with other novices.  There are some fast guys in 650 Twins and Formula IV, my two races for the day.

650 Twins started slow for me.  I was gridded at the back of 43 other bikes, with no idea how that all fits into turn 1.  I took it way slow, and found myself way behind the pack coming out of turn 2.  Fighting around other bikes, I finished 21st.  Not bad, but I realized I needed to be more aggressive on the start to pick up position early.

Formula IV was a much better start.  Again starting from the back against 44 riders, I got the jump on half the field early, and was in roughly 26th place out of turn 2.  It was shaping up to be a fun race, with Oliver just in front of me in the second lap when #520 decided to make a late inside pass on me in the bus stop.  As I remember it, and as seen by my friends in the tower, he was late getting in there, and I didn’t see him until I felt him hit on the left side, standing me up and forcing me to run off-track, with a violent head shake.  I kept the bike up briefly before the front end washed out and I was tossed over the bars.

It’s going to be a few days at least until my knee is feeling better, I suspect.  It’s tight and sore from some sort of impact in the fall, but I’m otherwise none the worse for wear.  The bike’s hopefully going to be back together in a week, with only about $500 in parts.   And so it goes in this sport.

I’m excited about getting out there for the next round at Infineon in April, and relatively happy with my results this weekend.  It’s all tempered with a much more complex understanding of my relationship with racing, due to the visible risks and pain, but also the absolutely wonderful people with whom I’m privileged to share this experience.