AFM 103 – Greg McCullough

Thanks to being in my friend’s wedding on Saturday night down in the bay area, I wasn’t able to attend any of the practice for this weekend.  With the new pavement, tire and suspension setup from last round at thill was going to be largely out the window.  Oh well.  Gotta play with the cards you have.

I rolled in at 1:45am Sunday morning, passing out in Jenn and Jason’s trailer until 6:15.  Gametime.  Oh wait, the story starts earlier than that.  Let’s back up a second… til about 11am Saturday, when I loaded the bike in the truck – ‘Hey, where’s the bike key?’.  After some frantic searching, calling my friend Tom, with whom I’d just done a Willow Springs day on Monday… I headed to the wedding, bike and gear in the back of the truck, ready to go, but no key.  On my way to the reception, I got the good word from Jason confirming that I could wire out the ignition and start the bike without a key.

Ok, back to the track, 6:15am.   Coffee.  Truck unloaded.  Waking up.  Mostly.  Jason grabbed Brian Esslinger for a wiring explanation then wired out the ignition and put in a push button.  Fired right up.  We also had to get gas in the bike, so we put a screwdriver through the key lock on the tank.  No biggie.  I’ll put a keyless screw type cap on later.  We’re ready to go.  Not really.  A quick tire swap for a harder compound on the front, registration, tech inspection, and 10 minutes til first practice.  That’d be the only practice actually, and my first race was #2.  I went out after Jason and put together some crappy laps, and watched him get away a second a lap or so.  Great.  Mr. second-weekend-on-a-600 is putting it to me.  This should be a GREAT set of races.

Quick gearing swap to add one tooth in the rear.  15-46 became 15-47.  No time to test it, but it should be a lot better, if I can figure out how to deal with some of the resulting shift points.  Fresh tire on the rear.  20 minutes til race time.  Watched the first lap of race one and turned on the ipod to get focused.

Race 1: 600 Superbike

Gridded 9th, on the outside of row 2, I had a good shot at turn one, with very little seat time and nothing but the Linkin Park song echoing in my head.  Green flag.  I didn’t get a great jump, but headed into turn 1 in 8th.  Go Go Go.  Eccleston tried to come underneath me into 4, but didn’t get it done, only to sneak under in 6.  As I chased them, trying to figure out shift points and remember how to go this pace, the group in front put a solid 4 second gap on me by lap 2, leaving me stranded in my own race as I finally got down below 1:56.  Somewhere around lap 3, Tim Kamholtz came by me, and I chased him for a while, but ultimately finished 9th, with Willis crashing out of the lead early.

Sloppy first few laps, but settled in ok.  Time to up the ante.

Race 2: Formula I

Having about 2 hours plus lunch to reflect on things, a few shift point tips from Berto, plus some suspension tweaks from Dave Moss, I gridded up with a better mindset than the last race.  Green flag.  I was neck and neck with O’Sullivan for the lead into turn 1, but got swarmed as we turned in and got back on the gas.  I really have to remember that the entry speed to that corner is WAY lower from the starting grid than a regular lap.  Gotta stay on the gas.  Again, I found myself in 8th after the first half lap.  This time, I stayed with the pack a bit better, and came onto the front straight at the end of lap 2 with everyone strung out within a few seconds, and Billy Scott about a second and a half ahead of me.  I could see an equal gap had formed ahead of him.  He looked back over his shoulder, and I could see he realized he was out of the race ahead.  Game on.  This pace is pretty easy.  Let’s pull him in and go after the guys ahead in the next lap.

Cut a couple 10ths off into turn 1, then pulled closer on the way out of 2, rolled hard into 3 – typically my weakest turn, I could see the gap getting smaller, flipped it back to the left into 4, trailing across the apex – a little sloppy on the turn in, cracked on the gas, then crschsrschshsrhsch… hey, I’m on my ass, following my bike, scraping along.  Dammit, and the race was about to get good.  I picked myself up and ran away from the bike, did a quick shakedown, and helped the cornerworker pick up and move the bike as soon as the field had passed.

Well crap.  Broken clipon on the left side, dirt everywhere, but otherwise didn’t look too bad.  I was immediately hopeful that I could get her back in and fixed up for race 9.  Sadly the cornerworkers only cut me loose to run back across to the pits, but it was too far to push a 1-barred bike in the time it took the next race to do their warmup lap.  I’d have to wait for the crash truck – and that damned truck didn’t end up running until the end of race 8, Formula Pacific, leaving me basically no time to patch up the bike.  They finally rolled in with it just as the podium ceremony was ending, sending my race’s bikes out on track for warmup.  The guys I pit with did a valiant job of trying to get the bike cleaned up and ready to go in case the race was red flagged, but we threw in the towel when the race reached halfway.  A red flag wouldn’t go to a restart at that point.  Thanks Ricky, Dave, Jason and Clay!  I really appreciate the help, and you know I’ll return the favor when I can.

Here’s the bike, unloaded Monday morning:

The once-nice paintjob is definitely going to see some Krylon after I get the fiberglass patched up.  Since I was already dragging the bellypan, it was due for some work anyway.

Looking forward to Infineon… 2 days of practice, plus the 4 hour endurance race on Trogdor’s 750 with Jason and Blaise.  All that seat time should set me up well for a good showing on Sunday.

Congratulations Jason on a stellar weekend!   Top 10 finishes in all 3 races from grid positions ranging from 19th to 26th.  Killer performances, with a 6th place finish in 600 production, still reeling in 4th and 5th as the 6 laps ran out.  2nd race weekend on that R6.  Damn.  My teammate is going to kick my ass out there if I don’t watch out.

Oh yeah, and that blog updating via iPhone idea… well, if I’d had some downtime maybe that would have worked, but I found myself rather busy most of the weekend.  Maybe next round.  We’ll get some endurance race action too.