My race weekend ended in first round losses in 3 classes. First blow came when I made a rookie mistake in top sportsman. I qualified #11 in the field of 32 bikes with a 7.97 ET. I decided to dial in at a 7.99. My slower opponent dialed a 8.21. When the light came down I was passing my competitor in the 60' and lead him down the track. I typically look back around the 1000' mark if I'm ahead to qauge my opponents track position but look back around the 900 mark instead and he was no where close. Forsomestupid reason, I rolled off the throttle thinking I was going way to quick and didn't want to breakout. I looked back again at thec100' cone and my opponent had quickly closed the gap. Dang. I immediately locked throttle again but I had lost to much momentum and he got past me to cross the stripe first for the win. My wife came to the end of the track and tow me back to the pit area. She told me the announcer said i was going to hate myself when I saw the time slip. Sure enough I started to kick myself when she handed the slip to me. The reason I was so far out in front of the guy was not because I was going to quick, it was because I had managed a perfect reaction time on the pass. I threw that perfect light away by cutting gas at the wrong time. That kind of light doesn't happen often and almost always insures a win. Oh well. On to street ET eliminations. I dialed the 750F in at a conservative 10.65. Me and the bike simply were not gelling this weekend so I built a buffer into the estimated time. Just luck My opponent ended up being a team member. He was also on a Honda. A newer CBR 600 which he dialed in at a 10.75 if I recall correctly. This means I was spotting him by a tenth of a second. Ive been racing against him for well over 20 years now and he is a tough competitor. Lately he's been on fire with multiple wins and runner ups so knew I had my hands full. We both did our burn outs and pulled into the staging beams. When the tree came down, I threw the clutch away and locked the throttle. I immediately saw the red light on my side but also realized my front-end was starting to uncharacteristically climb in the air. DANG it. I slowly let the bike settle down to the ground and finished up the pass. Crap. Now I'm out 2 of 3 classes I've enter. I knew I had to make the next one count. This class is run on the 1/8th mile on a 5.60 second index. The bike i race in this class is a small tire wheelie bar Kawasaki. It's actually my wife's old bracket bike with a different engine. I built a car tire bike for her a few years ago. In this class you run off a 4 tenths pro tree. Both bikes leave the starting line at the same time and its first to the finish line without breaking out for the winner. I drew a street bike as my opponent. We rolled up to the beams and lit all bulbs. When the tree came down I knew I had a better reaction time and basically left him behind. My bike is actually quicker than the 5.60 index so I short shift it to get close to the number. If I'm way out front, I scrub off momentum by hitting the air shifter button a few times which kills the ignition momentarily. Twice is usually enough. On this run i was in front all the way to the mph cone so I bumped the button a few more times to keep from breaking out. We crossed the line side by side. Unfortunately his win light came on instead of mine. My time slip showed exactly how close the race was at rhe finish line. He crossed .006 in front of me. A knats butt basically. Boy oh boy. Well, my day was over in the saddle.
My secondary job that weekend was being co-crew chief with the wife for a friend who was in the 4.60 index class. I ended up wearing the hat of mechanic as well because he had electrical issues that affected his runs. Once we got it solved, he qualified number 10 out of 45 bikes. We went on to make 3 rounds until a slower reaction time by our rider led to his loss. I would have liked to see him go on to win this event but we both were pleased at having gotten the bike to perform well. Next race, I feel the team can take this bike further into the rounds.
All in all, I had a good time at this event. It was our first major race since the pandemic began so I was happy to be in competition again. Next event is the Man Cup race at Rockingham, followed by the XDA finals in Maryland.
