When: June 9-10, 2001
Where: NHIS, Loudon, NH
Saturday June 9
Got up early, got to the track Sat am. The transponder line was huge, but I got
through it and pre-reg pretty fast, and managed to get the bike teched and myself suited
up in time to make 8am practice (on cold tires). Wow.. what a fucking mess! The Penguin
students were out there, and some of them were downright dangerous! I went through
pit-out behind someone on a rented ex500, and the first thing s/he did was take a right
onto the race line, before they were even to turn 2!! oi!
Spanky and I hooked up for second practice. He went out in front of me, and passed a
couple s-l-o-w kawis (in matching outfits!). I didn't feel like it was safe to pass,
so I held back for a while.. they were all over the place. I finally got past them,
and Spanky had made some serious ground.. so I put my head down, and managed to catch up
with him.. we played tag for the practice, and had fun, aside from the high moron count
around us. I have got to get out of red sticker practice!
Afternoon arrives, and I'm not on the grid sheet for GP Singles, even though I
pre-registered. Turns out I didn't fill out the form correctly, and they didn't catch it
at the pre-reg window in the morning, so they added me to the grid.
GP Singles
I started dead last in a field of 40 people. There's no particular grid order (aside from
entry order) so it's one big random mix of people. I got a great start, and got on
the gas. I managed to get a best lap of 1:31.8, and somehow, I came in 6th, out of 16
amateurs. Not bad, considering I started in the back <G>.
Sunday June 10
Sunday morning practice went much better than Sat morning practice, and for the first time
ever, my practice times came out on the sheets. I was going a lot slower than I expected,
but it's hard to get good speeds with all the traffic. Have I mentioned I need to
get out of red sticker practice? <G>
GTL
This race was a mess for me. I felt more out of shape than usual, and ended up with
problems shifting. After about the 6th lap, I was screwing up my downshifts into turn 3 a
lot, and would come out of 3 in 2nd or 3rd gear.. and I need to be in 1st. I had
passed a lot of people in the first few laps, and one by one they got me back. My
hand got so tired, I was upshifting on the back straight without the clutch to try and
save my hand for turns 3 and 6. I finished 19th out of 24. I need to tote mine
arse to the gym!
Lightweight GP
This race turned out to be awesome. I expected it to be miserable, since they combine LW
GP and HW Superbike (stupid combo!). They apparently didn't have enough entries to
split it like they did the previous weekends, so we all went out together. I got an
awesome start and blew by a third of the wave (from the second to last row), held my own
through 1 and 2, and managed to do some killer late braking (and passed a pack of about 6
people!) into turn 3. I was feeling awesome! On the second lap, the red flag came
out (there was a 5 bike pileup in turn 9), and we restarted for a full 8 laps. My
start wasn't quite as good, and I certainly didn't get past all the people I had before
off the line.. and this time turn 1 seemed even scarier.. lots of bumping and crazy moves.
I was also bit worried about the clouds overhead, as I could see the rain coming
towards us going over the hill into T6, and could see lots of lightning as I came down
into T10. It started to drizzle on cooldown, and had graduated to a downpour just
after I got back into the garage. I did pretty well overall, and managed to tick off
a 1:31.2 on the last lap. I came in 18 out of 30 people.. so I was pretty happy.