AFM 103 – Greg McCullough

After a bunch of little adjustments and replacements over the past week, I took the bike out for a trackday on Monday the 21st.  I didn’t run any faster than usual, but learned a few new lines, and generally increased my comfort level running around Infineon.

I spent Friday evening monkeying around with my clutch adjustment, dropping the fork height by 5mm, and popping in a regulator from Zoran.  After all my struggles with my non-charging system, it turns out the bike only needed a regulator.  Good, but pretty dumb that I waited til last week to really diagnose the situation.  The bike didn’t need a charge all weekend… so nice to have one less thing to worry about.

Saturday’s practice went quite well.  The fork adjustment made turn-in much easier in a few spots, allowing me to run into the high 1:50s after a few sessions – my fastest laptimes yet.

The AFM officials kicked a bunch of us out of the Saturday afternoon novice races, since our times are clearly fast enough for the regular Sunday races.  As much fun as those races were, it’s nice to not worry about trying to keep it upright for that race and qualify for Sunday.  It’s Saturday practice, Sunday races from now on.

Jason (558) and I signed up for Open Twins in addition to our 650 Twins and FIV regular races.  Although our bikes are outclassed in this race, it gave us something to run in the morning, and not sit around til 2:30 with nothing to do.  Turns out it was a weekend-saver for me.  On the first lap, I suddenly heard my intake noise double.  After my little incident with the exhaust pipe a few months ago, I knew what that meant.  Looking back, I saw the exhaust can had popped off the pipe at the front rivets… hanging only by the hanger bracket.  I pulled off into the pits and spent the next hour or two hunting down exhaust packing and putting the can back together.  I really need to re-do the job with steel rivets before next race.

On to the fun stuff.

F IV.

I started from grid position 37, since I crashed out of the first round, and gridding is a cumulative points ranking.  I got a crappy start, wheelie-ing badly out of first gear, and didn’t get on the gas hard up the hill to turn 2.  I’d lost 5 positions or so before I got into turn 3, and decided it was time to get my ass in gear.  Diving down to turn 4, I grabbed the outside line, passing 2, and another on the entrance to the carousel.  Picked off another on the exit, and we were back in business.  I picked off a couple people each lap, and ultimately finished 15th, running 1:50s.  Not too bad.  Puts me in striking distance of a top 10 next race.

650 Twins.

I gridded up in 19th.  This race almost became and instant replay of last round.  As I swept up the hill into turn 2, a cloud of dirt and flying bike parts greeted me, this time far enough ahead to be off-track before I showed up.  And people say 650 twins are the nice starter class to race.  Whatever.

Restart, minus 2 of the front runners.  My clutch was feeling a bit weird again, so I didn’t get a good run in first gear, but drove up the hill pretty hard, picking up the spots I lost on the start.  I found myself behind Jason at the carousel and couldn’t find a good hole to get through until the 8s.  I got a great drive on the exit, but found myself on the outside of his path, and didn’t want to run past there, in case he drifted wider and I ran out of track.  I had to back off and scrub the attempt.  !@#$.  Note to self: square it off a bit and drive up the inside next time.  Jason was running pretty good and I couldn’t get by until turn 7 of the next lap.  Time to go catch up.  I pulled in the 2 second gap to Everret and Rick and passed them both hard on the brakes into 7 again.  And with that, it became a lonely race.  I couldn’t close the gap on Jeff Frost fast enough and finished the race in 12th.  Checking my laptimer later, I was running consistent 1:49s out there.  Picked up a whole second between races.

It was a solid weekend with lots of fun racing.  I can’t wait to go do it again.  Until then… I need to find 3 seconds.