Everybody's Got To Have A Plan
AFM Road Open Twins Series - Round 5
Thunderhill Racetrack, July 13th and 14th 2009

I had been doing some thinking during the four weeks down time since round 4, and had come up with a plan to improve my performance... they say you need a plan.

First, I decided to apply some actual science to my rear shock, rather than the old seat-‘o-the-pants voodoo which has been the way for most of my career. I went over to see Phil Douglas at Aftershocks in Livermore, and Phil put my shock on his research-grade shock dyno. This cool machine runs the shock thru a compression and then rebound stroke at ten different velocities and draws you nice graphs of the damping resistance versus shaft position versus shaft speed. Whilst nothing was crazy off, it didn’t look that good either, with clear evidence of hysteresis as the compression stroke slowed and changed direction. Phil took the shock apart and performed a careful rebuild with new oil and a vacuum bleed. The curves looked better back on the dyno, and a few days later I re-installed it on my bike with great expectations in my heart.

Second, I had come to the realization that I was, in fact, capable of going faster at Thunderhill. I felt sure I could do it because Craig Smith was running about 5 seconds a lap faster than me, and his 999R wasn’t that much faster than my 999S… but what he was doing, was rolling thru the corners faster than I was. So I took some quiet time in bed a few of the nights to visualize the corners, seeing myself letting off the brakes earlier and carrying more speed everywhere.

Finally, I decided that I was not going to do any track days as race practice during the break because I found it difficult to get up to full race speed at a track day. I know Thunderhill well enough, I reasoned, so what I needed was quality laps not quantity – meaning fresh tires and the right mindset.

So I didn’t practice at all until Friday July 10th, the open test day before the race weekend, and by the end of the morning sessions I found that the rear end of my bike was still pogoing pretty badly, although slightly better. In a mad moment of frustration, I made a massive adjustment change to my shock during lunch break, and in the first session after lunch I could feel that the shock was massively improved. That afternoon I set my fastest lap to date at Thunderhill – a 1:56.3 – in relative comfort, and, counting on my race day habit of going 1-2 seconds faster in a race than in practice, I felt that I was ready to stick to the top three guys in F40 and Open Twins.

Saturday morning rolled around, and I was ready. I had slept well, my times from Friday were inspiring, my plan for the day was nicely aimed at getting me to the peak of performance with fresh tires by 4:30pm for the Formula 40 race - and then it all went sideways…

Second practice session of the morning, FIRST lap, some bozo runs into me and knocks us both down in the fast left hander turn ten. Painful, scary crash. I got smacked in the  coccyx, left knee, both legs, and left hand – hard. My bike’s all smashed up, and his bike frame had literally broken in half. I yelled at him for a while. I was really pissed off that this idiot had knocked down because he’d wanted to win the first lap of practice.
Back in the pits, the bike is badly bust up and I’m too sore to fix it - or even try. I’m lying down feeling hurt and sick, and my friends Bud Anderson and Pat Blackburn come by to see how I am. “Why don’t you ride my 848?” says Pat, “I brought it as a spare”. Suddenly I’m on my feet, feeling much better. We go look at the bike, beautiful red and white paint, 16.5” Marchesini’s, full Termignoni exhaust system, the works. Can’t say enough about friends!

We start preparing the 848 with my race numbers and lap transponder when I notice Tiger Steve Metz looking at my wreck with a long face. “What happened to you, Steve?” I inquire. “Engine blew up in my 749” he says. I think for a minute. “Want to borrow my wreck? Take anything you need”. Steve uses my frame and engine, and replaces all my broken stuff with parts off his bike. Game on again for both of us, and the good kharma gets passed around.

Open Twins race rolls around mid-afternoon. I can stuff my cantaloupe-sized left knee into my leathers once I removed the foam armor insert, but I can barely bend the knee to get my foot onto the footrest. Down on the track, I’m gridded in third place, and I get a decent start and run into turn one in third place behind Craig Smith and Matt Green. I’m quickly passed by flyin’ Eric Gulbransen on a KTM SuperMoto 990 on the drive between turn one and two – the 848 is good, it feels light and turns well, but it doesn’t have the raw punch of a 1000cc engine. I’m trying to go fast and smooth, without too much risk to the bike, but the rear end of the 848 has its own pogo problem, and I can’t hang my knee off properly in the lefthanders.

Pretty soon Tiger Steve passes me on my own bike - the bum! - and then Pat Blackburn slides by smooth as silk on his 1098. I’m running sixth and don’t really have the mojo to push harder, but I’m enjoying my Sunday afternoon ride on this nice Ducati in the beautiful Northern California countryside.

On the last lap I see some kind of crashed bike in turn 9 – doesn’t look familiar, so I ignore it. I cross the finish line happy to have salvaged some good points and to not have crashed Pat’s cherry Ducati. Back in the pits, Linda tells me I in fact got 5th place because it was Craig Smith in the weeds in turn nine – and he’d been leading by a country mile. GoGo got second, Pat third and Tiger Steve fourth. Turns out Craig doesn’t remember how he crashed – he got his bell rung a bit, and unfortunately broke his foot pretty badly.

The last few sorry chapters on this weekend are that our friend and pit buddy Brendan Walsh blew up the motor in his 1098 on the front straight in morning practice and didn’t get to race at all. And another friend, Mark Henry, ran off the track going into turn nine on the last lap of the Open Twins race, and had to throw himself off his 1098 to avoid hitting Craig who was recovering in the grass from his crash thirty seconds earlier! Holy Cow what a weekend!!

The next AFM round is at Infineon, August 8th and 9th. I’m currently third in points for Open Twins and fifth in Formula 40 – and of course my goal is to get top three for the year in both classes ‘cos I want the cheap plastic trophies as mementos of all the work, money, pain and suffering that’s been expended here. As George Best said: “I spent a fortune on booze, women and fast bikes - the rest I just wasted”.

Thanks as always to: the crew at Munroe Motors; Jim Lubin of Vehicle-Systems.com: Linda from Jungls Catering; Terry, Wes, Dennis and the boys at Dunlop; Jim, Dave and Nikki at Catalyst Reaction Sus pension; Phil Douglas at Aftershocks; Brendan from Ducati North America; a very special thanks to Pat Blackburn for the loan of the bike, and Bud Anderson for the support; and finally to Michael and the PTT crew for the fastest track days.