AFM 103 – Greg McCullough

I’m rather behind the times with posting, so here’s a little catch-up.

T-hill open trackday with KneeRiders.com – 3/18

Brian Davis (www.motoshoes.com) hooked me up with new Pirellis over the weekeend. I picked up my forks from Phil on Monday afternoon, refreshed and sporting 5mm of extra spacer to give me some preload adjustment, and headed for the track that evening with my brother. Aside from my specific goals for the day, I was looking forward to my brother’s first trackday, on my SV, and the inaugural kneeriders.com trackday.

My brother did great, picking up the lines and the pace despite being buzzed by faster traffic in the open format track day. All this, while fighting a pretty bad cold. A little discussion between sessions:

After a few sessions with Dave, I focused on my front end complaints early, expecting to spend the day making setup changes like crazy. However, after studying my braking in isolation on specific turns, I found that the bike was just fine, and I just hadn’t been very smooth in my application of the brakes down at Buttonwillow last time. The rear end stayed down just fine as long as I didn’t stab the brakes too hard at first.

I spent the rest of the day focusing on braking, mixing in some play time with Brian Esslinger and Jeff Gagne on their R6’s, and a bunch of other folks who showed up to the day. I was happy to see my lap times comfortably drop down to a 1:58.5, 2.5 seconds off my previous T-hill best, and the first time I’d broken a 2:00 on any bike. Front runners are running around 53’s, but dropping a couple seconds in one trackday is always a good thing.

All in all a great day… until I found myself coming down with my brother’s cold that evening. Crap… another first round at buttonwillow while sick? 2007 instant replay. Vitamin C and echinacea in massive quantities. Gotta beat this thing.

Race weekend

I showed up on Thursday night to take advantage of the Friday practice. We always get a bunch more tracktime there than we do on Saturday when the rest of the racers show up. My goals were pretty simple… focus on riverside to the horseshoe (the fastest section of the track) and figure out how to be on the gas longer through there. I did get that worked out a bit, dropping down to 1:56 flats, before my rear tire started moving a lot. I called it a day around 3:30 and had the Pirelli guys throw on a new tire, despite the previous tire looking pretty far from worn out.

While we were getting new rubber, Josh at the Pirelli tent ran through some tire pressures with Jason and I, telling us to forget cold pressure and work only from some new hot pressures he provided for us. That made a lot of sense to me, since setting cold pressure early in the morning seemed like a goofy dart throw, since the resultant pressure once the tires warmed up on track would be significantly affected by small variances in the ambient temperature when pressure was originally set. It’s something I should have focused on earlier, but at least it was good to get that guidance with a day of practice left.

Saturday practice wasn’t wonderfully useful in terms of lap times… not doing better than a 1:56.5. However, the back end of the bike settled down great with the new tire set to Josh’s hot pressures. Good stuff. Confidence in the setup is always good.

The cold didn’t seem to be getting any better… and I lost my voice that evening. I figured that was a good sign though, since I usually lose my voice just before I get over a cold. Hoping to wake up clear headed and well Sunday morning, I went to sleep early. This time, I borrowed a portable heater for the car and hooked it up to my generator, since I’d woken up the previous two nights in the wee hours, too cold to sleep. Probably not a good thing for trying to get well.

Sunday morning. I felt worse. Quite a bit worse. Light headed and nauseous. After some breakfast and coffee, I headed out for morning practice. Gotta find a rhythm I can work with for the day. After 1 lap I knew I was in trouble. I hurt, all over, and was losing feeling in my toes and fingers. I pulled in after 4 laps, parked the bike, and stumbled to the car feeling like I was about to pass out. The weather had warmed up to 70+ already, but I was freezing. I huddled in the car under all the blankets I had and shivered uncontrollably. WTF? After an hour or so, I felt a little better – enough to be able to sit upright without puking or passing out. I heard my first race start without me. That’s a sucky feeling. Lunchtime came, and I ate some food and took some Aleve in hopes of stablizing my head a bit. It did, a bit, and I suited up for race 7 early in the afternoon. Red Bull. More Aleve. Take the warm up lap, and see how it goes.

Jeezuz. Having been slightly delirious all morning, it was weird being back on track. However, feeling was 100% in my fingers and toes and I was feeling coordinated enough to not be a safety risk to anyone.

Formula I. Grided 49th – dead last. Given my current state of mind, I wasn’t going to be able to get too aggressive with the start, but I needed to get a lot of passing done in the first lap if I was going to pick up spots.

Green flag. I headed for the outside edge but got blocked off by someone in the row in front of me. Only passed about 5 guys in the first hundred feet. Headed for a gap up the middle as we headed into turn 1. Snuck by another row or two and drifted wide heading into 2. Stuck it up the inside of 2 more guys and tried to get a drive heading into cotton corners. Went up the inside, way inside, of about 3 guys, all trying to out brake each other. Got all but 1, and held off on passing anyone else until riverside. In the next lap and a half, I made a pass every couple corners. I remember going passed Brian Esslinger onto the front straight, then Trogdor exiting riverside, while chasing Ryan Teixeira through traffic. He’s a quick guy and started at the back of the grid with me this round. Always fun to have a rabbit.

I ran out of steam on lap 3, and gave up the chase. Red bull got me to 18th position, but I was done. Thankfully, I was in a huge gap in the field. Nearly a front straight’s worth of gap in front and behind. I cruised around in some seriously ugly form. Checkered flag came mercifully soon, and I finished with the same gaps front and back. 18th should result in a halfway decent start for Sears Point.

That was it for the weekend. I skipped 600 Superbike, with zero energy left to get it done, watched some of the other races, packed it in and headed home.

As I drove home, feeling better than I had all day, I had a long time to consider the weekend. It was painful to have not really raced. Wandering around in Formula I slower than I ran in practice wasn’t really racing. I’m glad I went out and gave it all I had in me at that moment, but it doesn’t make the weekend feel much better.

26 days until Sears Point. Need to get a trackday or two in before then, and find some speed at that track. Running 6 seconds off the pace isn’t going to cut it.