AFM 103 – Greg McCullough

Just thought I’d post up a few pictures from a recent trackday with ZoomZoom at T-hill. The bike’s sporting a brand new paint job, thanks to Harley Barnes. The e-racings bodywork I picked up turned out to be pretty damned decent for the price ($400), and the paint job looks pretty sweet. The numbers need some adjustment, and contingency decals aren’t on there yet, but the main sponsor is on there – RideMerchant.com.

On the subject of RideMerchant… I’m pretty excited about a new feature we’re rolling out on there pretty soon. Garages – a dedicated spot on the site, with your own custom URL, where you can list all that crap you have in the garage, for FREE. You can list stuff now, but with the garage, you’ll be able to put that URL in your forum signature line, myspace page, etc, so more other folks can check out all your stuff quickly and easily.

Anyway, on to the pictures.

I think I used that phrase to describe my approach to racing over a year ago. It applies now more than ever.

Saturday dawned cloudy and cold, with a signifcant chance of showers. We only fit in 1 cold practice session before the rain came pouring down, shutting down all track activities for the day. After the days at Reno and conversations with faster guys, I had planned to spend Saturday working on getting through turn 6 faster and braking more smoothly. I’ve developed a habit of stabbing my brakes too hard, unsettling the chassis, making it impossible for me to get on them 100%, leaving me with a longer – and unpredictable – stopping distance.

Sunday’s races would just have to be treated like practice instead. Looking at a 5+ second deficit in my lap times vs the front runners in my classes, I know I need to tear down and rebuild my riding skills and track approach to get the headroom I need to go play near the front. Spending my 3 races pushing as hard as I could with my approach from last round wouldn’t yield any useful progress.

Race 1, 600 Production.

Starting from a 5th row grid position, I got a pretty good jump, heading into turn 1 in around 14th place. After the first lap, I had to force myself to calm down and focus on the 2 project areas for the day – gradual initial braking, and getting into turn 6 with more speed, yielding a double apex line and a better drive out. As these things usually go, I ended up learning some unrelated things too. Keeping in mind Shawn Reilly’s comments about focusing on the drive out of corners, I found a better line into turn 2, which yielded more speed into 3/3a, and a revamp of my approach there. Although I rarely linked them up right in the 8 laps I ran, I found a 1/2 second at least that I should be pull out in the future. While working on braking, I had to move my brake markers back a bit, since a couldn’t get my brain to be gradual on initial braking without giving myself some breathing room. It was painful to give away time like that in a race, but necessary to get my braking more stable and effective, ultimately bringing my brake markers in tighter than ever. That’ll take time, but I have to start now. Anyway, back to the race. A few faster guys came by me, but I stuck with my gameplan and finished the race breaking into the 46s on my last lap, finishing in 17th.

Race 2, 600 Superbike.

This race went much like 600 production, except I let myself get hung up behind a slower rider or two, keeping my laptimes down to mid-46s again. Not the greatest, but it let me explore some other lines, and get a visual measurement of how my approach to turn 6 was working out, by gauging my gains/losses on the guy in front of me. I finished in 18th, after some DQ’s due to passing under yellow flags.

Race 3, Formula I

As the only class I raced the first round, I had a 2nd row grid position. Also, the field just isn’t as deep as the 600 races, since it’s a slightly lower profile race, without contingency money. I had a bet with Oliver that I could holeshot the race, and gave it my best go when the green flag came out. Reaction time was good, but I got greedy on the clutch and wheelied a bit to much, killing my drive. I drifted right, and the dude on my right drifted left, so we bumped a bit as we hit 2nd gear, turning left up the hill. I jammed up the inside into 2, and managed to salvage a 6th or so. With the leaders directly ahead of me, I started pushing hard, and my lines ended up all over the place. I had to remind myself of everything I’d learned during the day so far. Pushing hard = slow. Focus on braking smoothly, enter the corner to set up the drive out of it, and hold her open longer going over the blind hill into turn 6.

I ended up in 5th by the 3rd lap or so, and went back to work on my approach to lines and braking markers. Turn 11 made this a bit difficult, as an engine blowup in the previous race had oiled down the approach and apex pretty well. Not trusting the grease sweep, I was pretty conservative on the brakes. I could see guys out of my peripheral vision behind me in turns 7 and 11, but I tried to ignore them and keep working.

Somewhere in lap 4 I started hearing a motor behind me, and decided it was time to go forget the practice strategy and go racing.  It was Andy Allen, and he was all over me. I pushed pretty hard through my stronger section (1-4), but Andy came up the inside into 7. I pulled my line tighter and got back in front on the 2nd apex, leading into the 8s. Andy had another go into turn 11, but again ran a little deep, allowing me to square it up and pull back ahead. I put my head down and ran as hard as I could through the next lap, taking defensive lines into 7, 9 and 11. For whatever brain-dead reason, I rolled off the throttle way too early coming across start/finish on the last lap, and Andy came flying by. Unofficial timing says I won, but I suspect he should have taken it. Either way, it was a good battle, and was a great way to end the weekend.

One of the best parts of the weekend was all the support from family and friends. My folks came out to watch for the first time ever, and did surprisingly well with the whole thing, actually saying they enjoyed it. I’d been rather worried about their reaction to seeing people crashing, ambulances, and all the other constant reminders of the dangers of our sport. They were unexpectedly positive, and are probably coming out to more races in the future.

Before this saga takes up too many pages, a little shout-out to my pit-mate Jason Lauritzen who put his SV on the podium for the first time, with dominant performances in 3 restarts of the 650 twins race. 2 holeshots, and led almost all laps of all 3 restarts. Nice job! I’m looking forward to his pending transition to a 600, so we can go dice it up together again.

On Thursday, I picked up my new toy – a 17ft. Carson toy hauler.  I finally decided it was time to take the plunge and be more comfortable at the track.  After freezing and sweating my way through a few weekends last season, taking advantage of Jenn and Jason’s trailer frequently, it was really inevitable.  With lots more space to store gear, a full bathroom & kitchen, a real bed to sleep in – even with bikes loaded – it’ll make my 40+ days at the track this year much more comfortable and productive.  Quality sleep isn’t overrated.

This picture’s from today at Reno Fernley with ZoomZoom.  After towing over the hill late Friday night, I spent 2 days working on body position, mechanics and some suspension setup.  RFR has great flow, but the pavement’s pretty beat up, and we don’t race there.  So… it’s a low key  opportunity to focus on the basics, and take some time to help other riders with lines and mechanics, and above all, make sure that all this motorcycle madness is actually fun.

Backing up a bit…

I ran back down to Buttonwillow shortly after round 1, to teach at a trackday with TrackXperience. While there, I found some issues with the Graves rearsets on the bike, and realized I wasn’t comfortable with stability under braking.

Thursday, 4.10.08 – Trackday with PTT at Infineon.

My goals were to just get comfortable with the R6 at Infineon, while mostly focusing on braking. I picked up some Woodcraft rearsets that really helped with basic comfort, and started really pushing my braking markers in turns 7, 9 and 11. Then I lost the front in 11. I haven’t crashed myself out in almost 2 years. It messed with my head a bit, but I borrowed a brake lever from another rider, re-teched and made it out for another 2 sessions. That helped, but my brakes felt really unpredictable.

Friday, 4.25

I signed up for the Red Shift trackday at Infineon with Jason, to see if I could work out my comfort issues. With a bunch of tech spec grip added to my tank, I set off to see if I couldn’t stabilize my body on the bike under braking, minimize handlebar inputs and gain some confidence. In 2 sessions, it was obvious that my brakes were simply not working right.  They were fading in and out when I really got on the hard.  No bueno.

The previous owner said the bike had a fresh set of Ferrodo pads, so I was surprised to be having issues. With only 1 option at the track, I visited the Galfer guys who were there, bead blasted my rotors at their tent, and slapped on some of their steel pads. In the process however, I discovered that the pads that were previously in my bike looked distinctly like OEM pads – marked as Sumitomo. I’m just going to assume the previous owner just slapped them in there before sale by mistake, and blame myself for not checking earlier.  Anyway, the Galfers were a massive improvement over the brake fade I was experiencing, but not as good as the Vesrahs I had on the SV last season.

During the day, the best time I could clock was a 1:48, matching my best SV time from last year, but that’s it. 7 seconds off winner’s pace in 600s. Must go faster.

Saturday practice

I ran over to Alex and picked up some Vesrah SRJL pads early in the day. My god. Those things are awesome. Great feel, stopping power with very little effort – not much more you could ask for.

My best times for the day were in the 1:49 range, but I spent my time working on body position and lines, based on a track walk I did with Jason the previous night. Absolute lap times wouldn’t change Sunday’s races much, as I’d be starting near the back of the grid in 2 of 3 races, without points from Round 1, passing as many people as possible.

Sunday

600 superbike was my first race, right after lunch, gridded around the 14th row. I got a decent start, getting past a few rows going into turn 1, passing a couple guys each corner for the first few corners. Around lap 3, I ended up behind a bunch of about 5 guys, all nose to tail. I guess I’ve become a bit of a wus in the off-season. I didn’t make a serious move on anyone for a couple of laps, instead letting them make mistakes one by one, picking up a few more positions by the end of the race. Thanks to some dbcom glitch, race results scored me in 60th, but hopefully manual scoring reconciliation will sort that out before official results are posted in a few days. I’m guessing I finished in 20-25th position.

Formula 1 was my only race with points from Buttonwillow, and I was gridded a decent 14th (4th row), which gave me a good shot at finishing well. I got a good start, heading up into turn 2 around 8th place. I held pace for a lap or so, trying to reel in Blaise, but couldn’t maintain it and gave up a spot to someone else. 1 guy in front of me crashed out, giving me back 8th, but I found myself basically out of energy by lap 5. Lame. Just lame. I was over riding the bike and wiping myself out, and not going all that fast in the process. Brian Esslinger took advantage of that and passed me, gapping me out a bit before the finish. 9th place. A top 10 isn’t bad, but I wasn’t happy with how I rode. It should be easy to clock a good pace for 8 solid laps without gassing.

Race 3 – 600 production

With only a 1 race break to reconsider my approach, I decided to focus on getting a good start, enjoy having a good ride, and continually remind myself to stay comfortable. It generally seemed to work. I started in 54th position, got a good jump up the outside, past 5 rows or so. I tried to not over-ride, and just pick off riders each lap.   I forced myself to stop being a wus and make some solid block passes, and started really having fun at it.  Racing’s fun when you’re working your way forward in the field.  I ultimately finished in 17th, running 1:47 flats, matching my pace from the previous race, but more consistently throughout, without running out of energy.

This weekend was progress. Not as much as I’d like, but not bad, given the brake issues. I wanted to finish somewhat respectably in each race, so I’d have points for next round. Most importantly, I wanted to learn and improve each day, which I feel I did, in a few small ways each day.

I can’t wait for the May 7th Zoom Zoom day at Infineon. It’ll be a great chance to go ride with Blaise and Jason and really disect the track better, now that my brakes work and I’m getting more comfortable on the bike.

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.

Friday – Regularly scheduled day with ZoomZoom down at Buttonwillow.  Saturday – stuck around for a day with Keigwins.

Lesson of the weekend: Set out very specific tactical objectives for tracktime.

I went into the weekend with the goal of hitting 1:54’s and the plan to break down the track into a detailed, written analysis of braking markers, line variations into good passing corners, etc.  The laptime goal is working backwards from the KFG requirement of 3 seconds short of last year’s winner’s best lap to be gridded in the 3rd or 4th row.  I’d rather not spend Round 1 running from 60th to 20th position in every race I enter.

In hindsight, that laptime goal is pointless, egotistical and distracting.  I will be as fast as I will be… the only thing that matters is working specifically on areas I can improve as effectively as possible.

The problem with my over-ambitious strategy of breaking the whole track down corner by corner is two-fold.  A)  I’m still trying to adjust to the new bike geometry and pace, so I’m still distracted by unexpected things the bike tells me.  B)  I didn’t approach it one corner at a time.  I effectively ended up just running laps, and making a cursory mental analysis of the whole track at lunchtime, when I had a convenient segment of time to walk the track in my head.  Not very effective for much of anything.

My 1:57’s for the weekend were definitely not what I wanted, but I did learn a few things… I think.  I can’t run a rear Pirelli anywhere near as long as I did the Michelins on the SV.  It’s rather obvious, but not having enough grip for 120hp is a much bigger deal than not having grip for 80hp.  My tire budget for the year just went up.  Second, and this is only in hindsight, since I didn’t have a gameplan for suspension testing this weekend…  I’m 90% sure I need firmer fork springs.  Basic sag puts me at the end of the sag adjustment.  I was having a very hard time keeping the rear end down under relatively light braking, and the zip tie was always down at the fork bottom when I checked.  I assumed that was due to the wheelie hill at the track, but thinking more about that braking behavior (worse than the SV), I suspect the front end is just bottoming out.  Hence, I need firmer springs.

Next up – 1) Tracking down some springs asap.  2)  Get signed up for the open trackday at T-hill on the 18th.  3) Get new tires.

Gameplan for that trackday:  Focus on corners 2 and 14.  Just those two all day.  Figure out just how deep I can get on the brakes.  Adjust fork settings until the front allows me to get on the brakes as hard as possible and still allows good feel trailbraking and mid-corner.  If there’s time, work on the rear end too, while the tire’s pretty fresh.  Try different preload settings, adjusting rebound accordingly.  No laptimer.  Maybe get someone to time me at the end of the day and measure cumulative improvement.

The off-season is over. It’s game time, baby.

I spent this weekend up at Thunderhill with ZoomZoom – one of many weekends I’ll be spending with them, since I’m a season pass holder this year. Among the convenience benefits, like getting tech inspection in your pit area, season pass holders get to ride A and B group all day long… twice the track time, at less than the regular price for the day (if you do the math for the whole year). Having that extra time is phenomenal. It totally removes pressure to “go faster” with each lap, and allows me time to coach other riders, play with body position, look at track surface characteristics, etc.

As Jason was betting, I never touched the SV. I got on the R6 and never stopped. I’m pretty sure I won’t be racing the SV at all this year, and it’ll probably be up for sale in May. Why? A) the R6 is way more fun, period. It’s great really having some power to play with. It’s only my ability that keeps me from chasing and catching nearly anyone on the track. B) The power delivery is so different on the two bikes that I’d be chasing my tail trying to develop my abilities/set up for a track on both bikes in parallel. Too many different things to manage. I’ll learn way faster on one.

I spent most of Saturday just trying to get used to the much higher corner approach speeds, and discovered some weird body position stuff. Apparently, I moved very differently for right hand turns vs. left hand turns. It took until Sunday morning to generally sort that out, but it made everything much more comfortable, relaxed and in control the rest of the weekend.

I was hoping to beat my best SV lap time around thunderhill by the end of Sunday (2:00.5), but I only managed 2:01’s. However, that was a very consistent, comfortable trackday lap time. Getting a new rear tire Sunday afternoon really helped… I was sliding around on the used tire that came on the bike, keeping me from getting on the gas early.

The best part of the weekend was just hangin out with the crew again. I’ve missed all my racing buddies and it was refreshing to dice it up on the track and BS in the pits over beer in the evenings.

This year might just be even more fun than last year.

Jason playing with Bailey.

http://picasaweb.google.com/greg.a.mccullough/NewBike?authkey=vCcWoP-ktlI.

I gave up on waiting for the weather to cooperate and took pictures in the garage after re-numbering the bike.

I woke up at 5:30 this morning and jumped in my car to drive 3.5 hours through torrential rain and wind to Buttonwillow.  Sounds like fun, huh?  Coming right back was even worse, with an extra hour due to flooding and accidents.  But in between, I picked up the new bike for next year – an ‘07 R6, previously raced by Scott Gilbert in WERA and AFM in ‘07.  He and his grandfather Joe were nice enough to drive up half way from Riverside to split the transportation effort.

The obligatory pictures will come along soon enough, but here’s a teaser pic from their classifieds listing:

It’s got all the goodies – Ohlins suspension and Graves exhaust, pegs, covers, etc.   Now, it’s time for me to figure out how to make it go.  Ok, well, in February at the first track day.  In between, I’ll fiddle with the suspension and change the stickers & numbers around.  What fun.

Here are a few pics Gator sent over from the weekend.

One of the best moments of the season – dousing Oliver with 5 gallons of cold water.  Had to congratulate the 2007 Top Novice properly.  Good season, coach.

A bunch of 2007 SV650 novices.  From left: me, Ricky,  Oliver, Christian (Gator), Jason and Jenn.