PITT: July 15-17, WERA

Pittsburgh International Race Complex:

July 15-17, 2016, WERA/N2

WERA has been reluctant to ride on the new track due to its cost. Luckily N2 showed interest in teaming up with them to put on a 4 hour endurance race on Saturday, which made doing the National Sprints on Sunday much more feasible for WERA. I can’t thank them enough for working together and putting together this awesome event because it’s hard for me to justify driving that far just for a track day. Now that there’s racing on the new track, it makes that drive worth it.

After showing some interest in joining a race team for the endurance race on Facebook, a good friend of mine (and crew member of Eric Telger Racing at MotoAmerica events), Randy Chabot, asked if I’d be interested in joining his team, 3 Marines Racing, for the endurance race. I jumped at the chance to get on an endurance team because it’s something that I’ve wanted to do for quite some time, but have had a hard time figuring out logistically. I was excited that he asked and super excited to finally get a chance to compete in another form of racing that I’d been wanting to try for a while.

WERA and N2 Track Days teamed up for an awesome event this year at Pittsburgh International Race Complex; the Steel City Superbike Challenge at PIRC. PIRC built an extension to the original track that extended the 1.6 mile track to 2.75 miles of awesomeness and they plan to repave the original track in October of this year.

Pic 1: The Eric Telger Racing R6 with a new sticker on it, "3MR."

This was my first time riding the new track and the first time riding the old track since 2013, so there was a bit of a learning curve for me to overcome. N2 ran a track day on Friday so I got a decent number of laps on the track. My first impression of the new track was that it was silky smooth. Even when you put your knee slider on the ground, it felt like there was no friction at all, it was just so smooth. As soon as you transitioned back to the old track in the old T3 area, it was a completely different track. I was amazed at how the old track has changed over the last few years, it really bothered me at first just how rough it had gotten. My suspension setup was set pretty well for Barber since that was the last track I had been on. Barber has its share of rough areas, but overall it’s a pretty smooth track. That setup didn’t even come close to working at PIRC. Once I made some changes and softened it up a bit, I felt much better about the old track.

Along with riding my R6 on Friday, the team took turns riding Randy’s Kawasaki since that was the bike we were going to do the endurance race on. This was my first time on a Kawi and I did not like the way it felt the first time out. I felt like I couldn’t get on the gas anywhere on the old section because as soon as I did and the front would get light, the front end would shake out of control. Randy and I talked it over and we looked at the bike and realized that his steering damper had a dead spot in it, allowing the front end to oscillate out of control. Randy had crashed the bike pretty good a few weeks earlier at Road Atlanta, so we were still catching things wrong with it on Friday. Luckily, Randy had another damper on his 636 that he could steal and use on his 6R. After changing the damper and softening the bike some, I went back out on it and felt much better on it. The bike still had some weird shake in the rear end that I couldn’t understand at that moment, but it was rideable and I didn’t feel like we could really do much about it before the race on Saturday, so I let that go and decided to push through it.

On Friday evening the team went out for dinner and discussed our strategy for the race. We guesstimated we would need fuel about every 40 minutes, and we discussed when to change tires and riders. None of us had any clue what we were doing so we were totally flying by the seat of our pants, but we came up with what we all felt was a solid plan for the race.

We had about an hour and a half of practice time on Saturday morning so we all took turns riding, and we practiced our pit stops and changing tires. We didn’t really know how much time we could get out of a tank of fuel, so we used this time to try to figure that out.

Pic 5: Randy resting during the red flag.

Randy started the race from the second row. I was rider #2, so soon after the start of the race, I ran back to my toy hauler to get suited up for my shift. I was watching live timing from my phone and as I started walking out of the hauler, I noticed that they had red flagged the race only about 10 minutes in. The first thought that crossed my mind was “I hope it’s not Randy,” and the second one to quickly follow that was “this is going to be a long race if this is how we’re starting already.” When I got back to our pits, the bike was sitting there and Randy was in our pits, so I was relieved and anxious for the restart of the race. Soon after I made it back to the pits, the riders exited pit lane and did a sighting lap to get ready for a restart. As Randy circulated the track on the sighting lap, though, he noticed the bike moving a lot in the rear. He went to his grid position and saw that the rear tire had dropped pressure, so he pulled off the starting grid and did his best to get our attention. After the restart of the race, Randy somehow snaked his way through the paddock and got back to our pits so we could put a fresh tire on and get him back on the track. I’m not sure how many laps we lost in that mess, but it was enough to drop us back nearly to last place in the race. It turned out, there was a bad valve stem in that wheel, causing it to leak air. Randy went back out and did his best to gain back time. He rode a good, consistent pace during his shift and slowly chipped away at the teams ahead of us. Randy put in the fastest lap of the race for our team on lap 15 with a 1:52.46 and on lap 19 decided he had had enough. He had done a great job putting us in a position to gain spots back. We dropped from 7th overall to 22nd overall during the tire swap. He got us back up into 19th by the end of his shift.

Pic 6: Randy taking a breather after his stint, talking things over with John.

I pitted in after lap 46 and switched off with Rick. We lost 5 spots and dropped back to 12th overall in the pit stop, but the stop went smoothly so Rick went out to click off some laps. Rick worked us back up to 8th overall and rode a ton of laps, with his fastest being a 1:57.28 after about 30 laps.

Pic 7: The 3MR team goofing off after the race.

John went out on a fresh tire and was in P11 after the pit stop. After about 6 laps, he had gotten us back into P8 overall and P4 in the mediumweight class. He clicked off a bunch of laps with his fastest being on lap 104 with a 1:52.70. After signaling that he has coming in at lap 106, I suited up and got ready to finish out the race. I put in about 4 laps and took the checkered flag after lap 111, which landed us solidly in 4th place in the mediumweight class.

As much fun as I had on Saturday, Sunday was a different story. I have never ridden 53ish consecutive minutes before, and I felt it Sunday morning. After considering not racing in the sprints on Sunday, I decided that I haven’t raced with WERA all year and I miss racing with them, so I raced in one race before packing up and heading back home. Denise didn’t get to come to the track this time so along with not being sure I wanted to race on Sunday, I also wanted to get home early to get a chance to hang out with her some. I signed up for race 3, C superstock, and decided that was enough for Sunday. I also selfishly hated that I had gone so much faster on Randy’s bike than I had on my own R6, so this race was going to give me an opportunity to go faster on my own bike. I made the decision to race on the same tires I used for the track day… which were already take-offs from the MotoAmerica event at Barber, so already I wasn’t giving myself much of a chance to do well.

Pic 2: All of the teams lined up on hot pit waiting to practice.

I had enough laps on Saturday to have a pretty good understanding of the track, but I needed a few laps on my own bike to get used to it again after riding the Kawi, so I went out in the second round of practice and turned a few laps. Since I haven’t raced with WERA this year, I have no points with them so I started the race on the back row in 13th. My start wasn’t too bad, I wheelied a little off the line but I was able to stay in the throttle and ride it out. I picked up a couple of positions off the start and was riding in 11th coming out of T1, but I had a really hard time getting around the 2 riders in front of me. After the 3rd lap I finally found myself up in 9th and had some ground to make up on John and Randy ahead of me. I put my head down and did my best to catch up, but it seemed like I just couldn’t close the gap on them so I decided to back down a little bit. That’s usually not in me, I normally don’t stop until the checkered flag, but I was still really stiff and sore from Saturday and had a hard time holding onto the bike in some of the really rough sections of the track. Lap 5 was my fastest of the race with a 1:52.99, and lap 6 was a 1:54.98, clearly showing that I had given up on closing the gap. I had started to feel the rear slide more than normal coming out of the carrousel on the 5th lap, so it wasn’t worth it to me to keep pushing. I still didn’t beat my time on Randy’s bike, which is pretty frustrating because I think I can pretty easily pick up 1.5-2 seconds on my bike, but it just wasn’t to be on Sunday, my body was telling me I was done. I finished CSS in 9th place.

One interesting note that we learned on Saturday evening, I was packing some stuff up and cleaning up some when Randy yelled at me to come over to his trailer. Remember when I said the bike had some weird shaking in the rear end? Randy was getting ready to pull his 636 out to get it ready for Sunday’s races when he noticed something on the team bike. When I walked over, he told me to look at the rear end and see if I saw anything strange. I looked for a bit but didn’t really know what I was looking for, so he told me look at the rear tire. In his crash, he must have bent the swingarm because the tire was tilted 3-5 degrees to the right at the top of the tire looking from the rear. We had noticed some strange sprocket wear on the rear sprocket, and I nearly wore a hole in my boot on my right foot because the contact patch essentially moved to the left of the centerline of the bike by an inch or so, causing less clearance on the right side of the bike. After Randy noticed that, all of the issues that we had been having made sense.

I can’t thank my sponsors enough. Shoei Helmets and put me in the best helmet on the market, the new x-14 is really awesome. PopShadow Decals has done a great job for us for years making me and my equipment look professional. They really are top notch in quality and customer service. BD Racing has us covered with the best brake pads money can buy, Vesrah. Sportbike Tire Service is always helping us go faster, whether it’s with tires or setup advice, these guys know their stuff. Vortex Racing has been a huge supporter for a long time now, their rear sets and sprockets are the best in the business. Spiegler Performance Parts has the absolute best brake lines on the market, and they’re fully customizable so you can get the colors you want. Moto-D Racing has the best tire warmers for the money, and their customer service is fantastic. They also carry a lot of cool accessories for the race track. Pilot Motosport has stepped up again this year and teamed up with us to put us in the best protective suit in the business. Sidi Boots and Motonation have some of the best prices out there on the best boots money can buy. The new Mag-1’s are awesome boots, I can’t say enough about them. Pit Bull Products have the industry standard in bike stands, and their customer service is awesome. Spy Optics have been keeping the sun out of our eyes on the grid and on the fan walk. Core Nutritionals has been helping me maximize my time training for racing, and the Motorcycle Factory, Inc. in Woodbridge, VA has some of the best deals in the area on new and used bikes.

Pic 3: Randy checking over the bike while I warmed it up before practice.

We lost a spot during the pit stop, but after fueling the bike and having a quick chat with Randy about the bike, I jumped on the bike and put my head down. After about 4 laps, I got us back into 19th, and on the next lap I bumped us up into 17th with a couple quick passes on lap 26. After lap 30 I had gotten us up into 15th, and by the end of lap 46 I had gotten us back up to 7th place where we started. My fastest lap was a 1:52.59, which was close to Randy’s fastest lap, but I wasn’t able to be quite as consistent as he was.

Pic 4: Randy sending me off for practice on Saturday morning.

Looking back on our original plan, we had a lot of stuff figured out pretty well and came up with a pretty solid plan. The tank of fuel went a little further than we expected, which was good, but the tire issue early in the race put us in a bad spot from the get-go. Overall, I had a fantastic time on Saturday with the team. I learned a lot about myself and endurance racing, I had a ton of fun with the team and with people I hadn’t seen in a really long time, and I learned a little about what it takes to put together a good endurance team. I can’t thank Randy enough for all of his hard work getting ready for the race, and I can’t thank the entire team enough for letting me be a part of it.