Our morning test sessions were in the dry, but that soon changed to a steady drizzle of rain for the rest of the day. So… on went the rain tires (Pirelli Turbine). I also changed my rear sprocket to 43T (-1) to reduce my chance of wheelying. The first 2 of my 3 qualifiers were grid starts. A lot of riders chose not to qualify in the rain.
<Okay, flashback to last September when I last raced. My first grid start in 17 years, and the front end shot up 3 times before I got to corner 1. I was forced off the track by another rider, went offroad and crashed.>
You can imagine the terror in my mind as I replayed that scenario in my mind.
My first qualifier was Sportsman Heavyweight. On the grid I kept thinking… don’t hit me, don’t let it wheelie, and get through corner 1 upright/ontrack/alive. So I sat on the tank, slipped the clutch at the green, and most of the pack passed me on the start. But at least I was upright!
After 2 laps the rain tires were biting well, and I ended up qualifying on Row 2.
Second qualifier a while later was RACE Thunder… still in the rain and again a grid start. This was a waved qualifier that combined Thunder-Liquid, Thunder-Air, and SV650. The Thunder riders all started together, and I was starting on Row 1 inside with two Ducatis ridden by very good riders (Vammos and Stufko). Sigh… I knew how that was going to work out. Same thing at the start… the liquid Ducatis disappeared and a few air-cooled twins did too. Again, I kept it upright! My rain tires were biting well… they are really fun to ride on! A few fast SV650 riders caught me and passed during the qualifier, though with one I was able to motor by on the straight with the big 1000cc engine beneath me. I battled with another fellow on an air-cooled BMW twin, and needed 1 more lap to pass him but the qualifier ended. On the cool-down lap I was coming onto the back straight and was flagged about debris on the track; turns out one of the lead Ducatis snapped his chain on the cool-down lap and was being towed back to the pits by the other Ducati (arm-to-arm). I qualified with the Thunder-Liquid riders on Row 1 again.
Third and final qualifier was Novice Open… still in the rain though a non-grid timed qualifier. I was up against some of the guys I was pitted across from. But this time since we were in the rain (the great equalizer) I was right on pace with them instead of being left behind by them (like in the dry). After the qualifiers they said they could hear me right behind them, buzzing like an angry bumblebee. What a rush… Pirelli rain tires rock! I qualified mid-pack (10th of 21).
All-in-all qualifying went very well considering it was my first time back and racing in the rain all day. It was great fun, and I was actually looking forward to having the Sunday mains in the rainas well… needless to say my hopes were not shared by those around me. My qualifying times in the rain were only 4~5sec slower than my practice times in the dry. I think my gearing choice (-1) did not have the effect I wanted… my bike was bogging through a few important corners (onto the back straight after hairpin, and onto the front straight, too).
I arranged for a chassis tuning session on Sunday AM with John Sharrard of Accelerated Technologies. He is a suspension-tuning guru! I felt my TLR suspension was just plain wrong. I was finding that I used a lot of travel up front, and cranking down the preload had limited effect but made the front end pound more. I wanted to have John set a baseline for me.
My new brake setup was very very good… with new Brembo 19RCS m/c, Brembo 4-pad calipers, BrakeTech ductile iron rotors, and Ferodo carbon/ceramic pads. In the dry they were awesome… once I got the pads up to temp. In the wet I had mixed feelings. I could not brake hard enough to bring the pads up to temp so braking action was noticeably lessened. If I had the foresight I would have put in sintered pads for wet… and ideally I would have stainless rotors with sintered pads… maybe later. Since I had only 1 set of disks, I had to swap them between my dry rims and my rain rims. First time I swapped the rotors I almost didn’t get them off due to my Ti bolts binding with the mag rims. Luckily all the Ti bolts came out (with much prayer thrown in). On went the OEM steel bolts after that!
After the start (again, it went fairly well) it was a fairly uneventful sprint. I held 10th place for a while, but then dropped to 13th at the end. Out of 21 riders, I was very happy with that finish! My bike suffered a few minor cracks to the right-side fairing where the other rider hit me.
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