Practice & Qualifying
The track and facility were beautiful. This track was new to all but about 7 riders in the field. It took a minute to realize how much of this course was at full throttle on the R7, and the draft here makes seconds of difference. With only a 25 minute practice and then 25 minute qualifying, and not finding much consistent traffic to follow around me, I was set to start the races in 21st on the grid.
Race 1 – P.18
I got a great launch from the 7h row, but let up too early going into turn one and got shuffled back. I managed to progress up to the front of the back pack I was in and start to leave them. Unfortunately the pack of riders in front of me was too far ahead to gain any time on without another rider to draft for the lap times needed to progress.
Race 2 – P.20
Warm up for the day was in pouring rain. Just before, the series mechanics told me there were very few spare parts available this weekend and our race was only 2 hours later, so I chose to sit out the warm up and make sure we were starting the race. To our surprise, the track dried up instantly, so we went out for the sighting lap on wet tires and had to swap to slicks on the grid. I got a much better dive into turn 1 to 20* position. Again, once I just barely fell off the pack in front of me, there was no making the time up and I had a lonely race to the finish.
