posted on May 29, 2010 22:31
Blackhawk Farms Team Challenge Weekend
The weekend started out going down hill fast! Friday practice day was wet all morning and I decided to sit it out; knowing that it wasn't suppose to rain for the weekend I didn't see the point in practicing in conditions I wasn't going to be racing in. Friday afternoon the track did dry up and Scotty and I both did make a few sessions to get the flow back.
Saturday morning I did sign up for two sprint races to get my groove back and get into race mode again. The first race was GTU and I was ready to go, or so I thought. Went out to start the warm-up lap and my contacts started to dry up and I couldn't totally see. So there I am riding around the track blinking like crazy trying to get my contacts to settle back in place and out falls the right one. I pulled up to my grid spot and saw the contact sitting on my noise piece of my helmet. I took it out of my helmet so it wasn't blowing around and decided to run the race because my contacts are not that strong and I can still see everything in clear enough vision to race (contacts are more or less for driving so I can read road signs). So the green flag drops and I had an ok start, wasn't my worst but wasn't my best either. I'm out there running lap after lap and all I'm doing is going backwards so I ended up pulling in and called it quits due to the fact that I left one contact in so my depth perception was off and I was struggling more than I thought I would. So move on to the next race and try to do better.
Femmoto was up next for me and I was ready to go! I got the hole shot and was working my way through the Formula 40 class when I heard this clanking sound so I pulled her into hot pit to see the white flag flying. I decided that I wasn't smoking or spitting oil and the bike didn't really lose any power and that I was going to go for it and make one more lap. I slowly worked my way around for the last lap and ended up second by .7 of a second. Ended up finding out from Moon Super Cycles, when they got the bike torn down, that I had spun a rod bearing.
Sunday was Team Challange day and Scotty and I ended up having to ride his bike for the race. Everything worked out fine with having to use Scotty's bike because we have basically the same setup on both bikes with the exeption of a couple clickers different here and there. Scotty started the race because he always gets the greatest starts and that way he could get in front and all I had to do was stay out front. About 20 laps into the 75 lap race Scotty starts signaling that he needs to come in to pit. I couldn't figure out for the life of me why he wanted to come in so early. I made over half the distance on a tank last year so I knew he wasn't out of gas. I scrambled to get ready and we pulled Scotty in on about lap 32. About 25 laps into my stint I signaled for them to let me know how much longer I had to go. After about three more laps they figured out what I was looking for and I had 13 laps to go. All I had running through my head at this point was, "I'm going to make more laps then Scotty and make the distance and he couldn't!" Then I get the board that they wanted me to make one last pit. I figured maybe 3rd was gaining on us enough that they would catch me with a lap or two to go so by sending Scotty back out we will still finish 2nd. I make my pit and Scotty goes back out. I then find out that the reason for the pit stop and for Scotty's early pit stop was because, for whatever reason, Scotty thought the fuel light didn't work and that we could only do like 20 laps on the tank. We did still manage to finish 2nd in class and 3rd overall. So all in all it turned out to be a good weekend other then the engine rebuild we had to pay for.
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