NJMP: September 10-13, 2015

New Jersey Motorsports Park:

September 10-13, 2015, MotoAmerica

I had been working non-stop from the week before the WERA VIR round (beginning of August) until now to get everything ready for this event. As soon as the bike was rolled back into the garage after VIR, it went up on the table for an engine and wire harness swap, as well as a lot of other general maintenance to make sure everything was ready. The engine that was in the bike would have been legal in that the build didn’t break any MotoAmerica rules, however it wouldn’t run on Sunoco RMR fuel (due to its low octane rating) which is the spec fuel for the series, so I decided the easiest way to fix that would be to put in a stock engine and tune the ECU to get the most out of it. Fairfax Cycles put in a good amount of dyno work getting me a map for my normal race fuel and the Sunoco spec fuel so I could swap back and forth easily, and surprisingly, the RMR fuel actually made almost the exact same power that my other fuel made.

After weeks of hard work, I made the final adjustments to the bike on Tuesday and Wednesday and loaded the toy hauler on Wednesday night for a nice long weekend at the track. Move-in was on Thursday, so I left home at about 9am to get to the track by around 1pm. I was lucky enough to have gotten to the track at almost the same time as my friend, Tim Wilson, and we were able to set up our rigs in the paddock right next to each other. This was a huge help for me since I have virtually no experience with this type of event; Tim’s experience with the series proved to be extremely beneficial all weekend.

The weather on Thursday was pretty nasty from the time I left home all the way until 9 or so that night. It rained off and on, at some points pretty heavily. My friend Rick drove all the way to the track from Michigan and got there at the same time Tim and I did, so he helped me unpack and set up our camping area. Once there was a break in the rain, we went to registration and got the bike through tech inspection without any issues, and at that point we were pretty much ready for what Friday had in store. We looked over the bike once more, developed a game plan for the next day, then it was time to go to bed and get a good night’s rest since Friday would be very important day for my chance to qualify for the races.

Friday was a really fun day. My friend Ernie had flown in late Thursday night and helped us get the bike and gear down to the pits. I went out for practice at about 9am for a 30 minute session and I familiarized myself with the track and any spots I should avoid. I turned about 6-8 laps in practice and decided to come in to the pits and change tires so I could scrub in a new set for the first qualifying session in the afternoon. It took a little longer to get the tires changed than I had hoped, but we got the job done and I went back out and got about 3 laps on the new tires. We were finished for the morning, so we went back to the hauler and had some lunch and patiently waited for the qualifying session.

My first qualifying session was right after lunch for 40 minutes. Our plan was to go out and turn 8-10 laps as quickly as I could, then come into the pits for a rest and grab a drink, then head back out on track for another 8-10 laps. Last year’s qualifying cut-off was around a 1:33.0 so I was just focusing on making that happen. My first 8-10 laps were fast, I seemed to drop time every lap until I noticed that my lap timer said I was at about 1:30.8. Once I saw that, I completed one more lap and decided I needed to take a break, so I pitted in and talked it over with the guys. By this time Jon and Jessi had arrived, so we all chatted and decided to continue on with the plan to go back out. They told me my last lap was a 1:30.5, and I was happy with that, but I really wanted to be in the high 28’s or low 29’s so I got a drink and went back out to try to make that happen. Unfortunately, I got stuck behind some slower traffic for about 4 laps and wasted a lot of energy trying to get around them. By the time I got around them, I only got about 2 laps of clear track and was only able to get back down to a 1:30.8. I was a little frustrated at the situation because I really thought I had those faster times in me, but I was extremely happy I had made that much progress and likely successfully qualified for my first pro event.

The first thing I want to say in this season-ending race report is that I can’t thank all of my supporters enough, including private donors, sponsors, family, fans, and followers. Every one of my supporters helps me continue doing what I love by physically or financially helping me, or just by reading my race reports and being the target audience my sponsors are looking for. Without your support I wouldn’t be able to do all of this, so I sincerely thank you. Ok... now for the rest of the story...

After completing my first year of racing in 2012, my friend Ernie and I had started talking about what our plans were for the following year. I had forgotten about this until he recently brought it up, but I remember the two of us standing in my garage talking about something, possibly whether we should race with WERA or CCS in 2013, and he asked me what my long term goals were. At the time it seemed like a no-brainer, I wanted to race professionally and compete in AMA Pro. Fast forward 3 years and here we are… after just having completed my first pro event with MotoAmerica (formerly AMA Pro).

I’ve been wanting to compete in a pro event all year. I worked out all the details way ahead of time, ordered team shirts, and made sure the bike was legal in every way. The only problem was that my schedule just didn’t allow me to race with MotoAmerica… not until the September round at New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville, NJ.

On multiple occasions in the past 6 months or so, I’ve asked myself if I really wanted to pursue this. There seemed to be so many obstacles: logistically it looked like it was going to be a hassle, financially it looked like it was going to put a big dent in my race budget, and quite frankly, I wasn’t sure I could even qualify at a track that I hadn’t ridden on in over 5 years. The task at hand just seemed to be out of reach and let’s face it, the last thing I wanted was for me to force it and end up not making the show for whatever reason like my trip to Pike’s Peak. I can’t put into words how disappointed I was that I couldn’t compete in that race after having spent so much time and money preparing for it, not to mention having brought so many people out to Colorado to help me. It was a huge commitment on my part, but also by a lot of other people and I just didn’t want that to be the case again. However, after having told a few friends that I was planning on doing this event and having them book flights, etc., I ultimately decided I couldn’t back out now; people were already making plans to come help and watch so I decided I had to see it through.

Pic 1: Denise and I on the grid before race #2.

Pic 2: The tech sticker we worked all year to get.

Pic 3: The rig setup for the weekend.

Pic 4: The crew talking things over after the first time out in Q1.

Pic 5: Some of the crew on the balcony of the Officer's Club overlooking the chicane.

Since it was the last MotoAmerica event of the year, they decided to treat the teams with a dinner at the Officer’s Club at the track. Obviously I hadn’t raced all year until now, but I didn’t know if I’d get this opportunity again so I decided to take them up on their offer and take some of my crew with me, including my parents and my wife, who had gotten there by then. The food was decent enough, and the company was awesome. Colin Edwards and Jonathan Green stopped by, as did all of the MotoAmerica staff. Hearing their take on how the first year of the new series has gone was very interesting, and you could see that this is more than a job to most of them, this is a passion deeply engrained in their lives. It was encouraging to hear that they are working on a lot of great things for next season.

Pic 6: Jon giving me the fist pump as I cross the finish line.

I had a second opportunity to drop some time in the second qualifying session on Saturday morning, but historically speaking I never seem to do very well early in the morning. Q2 started at 8:30 on Saturday morning, and I have a history of crashes using Dunlop tires when it’s less than hot outside. I’m sure a lot of this is more of a mental challenge than physical, but either way I have a hard time going fast early in the morning. On my second lap in Q2 while riding at about 70% of my times on Friday, I tipped in to the left handed T5 and clipped my front wheel on the inside curbing because I wasn’t carrying as much speed as I was on Friday. This caused me to tuck my front tire and crash, but luckily I was able to pick the bike up and take off right away again. I went in to the pits to look everything over real quick and saw that the bike was fine, so I went back out and tried to turn some fast laps. Like I expected, though, I was only able to turn a 1:32.5 in Q2 with a cool track, so I would use my Q1 time as my qualifying time and would grid up in 29th position for race 1. Knowing that I had qualified for my first pro race was just now starting to hit me, and after I finished my morning session on track, I was starting to get anxious about the race coming up in the afternoon. The weather forecast was not in our favor, so that added stress and anxiety to an already intense situation.

Just like the weathermen predicted, it started raining about early afternoon and by the time of my first race at 3pm, the track was soaked and it didn’t seem like there was any relief in sight. Because all of our practice and qualifying sessions were on a dry track, the officials gave us an opportunity to do a few sighting laps on rain tires before the start of the race. During my first sighting lap, I was careful to take my time and note any spots on the track that I thought I should stay away from. Between turns 2 and 4 it seemed like there were at least a couple of bikes that had crashed on the first sighting lap and I told myself “don’t be like them, take your time.” Well… that lasted for all of 15 seconds and as I came out of turn 5 slowly rolling on the gas, I heard the rear tire spool up violently and before I could even react I found myself being tossed 5 feet in the air. I landed on my right side pretty hard and my bike slid down the track for what seemed like 20 yards or so. If you saw any videos of the races on Saturday and noticed a long white line on the pavement in T5, that was from my bike. Even though I highsided, my bike was hardly damaged at all, so I picked it up off of the pavement for the second time that day and rode the thing back to the pits. Upon initial inspection, it looked like the only “damage” to the bike was that the handle bar rotated in on the fork, so I grabbed a wrench, quickly fixed that issue, and ran back out to do another sighting lap just before they closed the pit exit. I made it all the way around the track and found my grid position and my crew met me there. Once we were on the grid, one of my crew members noticed my right foot peg had come loose in the crash. We hadn’t brought any tools because we obviously weren’t expecting to need any, so Rick ran over to a team on pit lane and asked to borrow some Allen wrenches. The only way to get to this bolt besides tearing the rear set apart was by compressing the rear shock, so Jon and Rick climbed on the back of the bike and bounced the rear end while Ernie put the wrench on the bolt and tightened it. I would have loved to see what our team looked like while everyone else was hanging out and we were frantically trying to compress the suspension enough to get the wrench on that bolt. However strange and out of place it looked, my crew did an awesome job and got the peg tightened down.

We got one more warm up lap, and luckily I was able to navigate my way around the track without crashing again. By the time I came back around to the starting grid, most of the butterflies had gone away, and I was just focused on doing what I had come to do. The starting procedures for this organization are a bit different than I had ever done; instead of a flagger flying a green flag to start the race, they use a series of red lights. The lights come on and stay on for roughly 2-5 seconds, and once the lights go out, you start the race. Well, just like normal, my start was atrocious. I want to attribute most of it to the different starting procedure, but with all of the stuff going on leading up to this race, it’s hard to say what made me get such a bad start. I didn’t go in to turn 1 in last place…. but it was really close. I told myself once I got to the starting grid after the warmup lap that I was just going to fall in line on the start and just play follow the leader for a while until I figured out what the track felt like on those Dunlop rain tires. I’ve only ever used Michelin rain tires up to this point, and I’ve never been on this track in the wet, so I had a lot to figure out during this race.

Pic 7: Jon congratulating me after the race.

I completed a couple laps in the wet without changing my position, but I was closely following a few riders. I forget exactly when I started making forward progress, but as I got more comfortable with the bike and the conditions, I made safe passes where I could. By the end of the first 5-8 laps, a number of riders had crashed out of the race, and I realized that if I could finish this race without crashing, I would probably do pretty well. The first few laps were slow, like 1:58 slow. But after awhile, I started knocking off 5 seconds here and there until I was comfortably riding in the 1:41 lap time range. I stayed pretty consistent at that pace and became a little complacent. This was one of the longest races I’ve ever done and to be honest, it’s kind of hard for me to focus that long. However, once I saw the white flag fly and saw Ernie on pit wall telling me I was running in 21st place, I remember telling myself “PAY ATTENTION! YOU’RE RACING, DAMNIT!” The racer in 20th place was ahead of me with about a 1 second gap, give or take. I decided I came to race, so I put my head down and pushed harder than I had so far and made a pass stick on the outside coming into T6. That lap would ultimately be my best, getting down to a 1:39.4.

Pic 8: Some of the crew that met me at tech inspection after race #1.

After the race, I met the crew at tech inspection and gave everyone high-fives for a job well done by all. The pass on that last lap paid off, as my friends told me they had heard the announcer give me a nod saying “Eric Telger, rounding out the top 20!” I didn’t realize it during the race because of all of the adrenalin and because of how hard I was trying to focus, but once off the bike I could tell how sore my right side was and how stiff I had become. I was extremely excited to have finished in 20th on the lead lap in my first pro race, but I was beat up and sore and ready to get out of that suit.

Pic 9: The whole crew at the beginning of the Fan Walk.

Saturday evening was another great night at a race track with friends and family. The entire crew was so much fun all weekend, and I really enjoyed everyone being there and had a ton of laughs at everyone’s expense (including my own). My parents and Ernie flew in from the St. Louis area, Rick drove from Michigan, Jon and Jessi drove up from Richmond, and Trey and Katie drove up from DC with my wife in tow. Every single person helped contribute to my success throughout the weekend, and I’m so glad they all decided to make the trip.

Pic 10: Signing autographs for some young fans.

My first time on track on Sunday was early in the morning again, so after discussing this with my crew, we decided I should just go out on older tires since this session was literally just a warm-up and didn’t influence my grid position at all. I went out and turned as many laps as I could, but before even really pushing hard, I could tell I was really stiff and I wasn’t able to move around like in the previous days. The highside on Saturday was going to take its toll on me on Sunday, but I was determined to do my best and still finish out the weekend on a high note.

Pic 11: Taking a picture with a super-shy little guy.

The fan walk was from 10-11 on pit lane, and I wasn’t going to miss it. After participating in Pike’s Peak’s Fan Fest last year and really enjoying getting to talk to a ton of fans, there wasn’t much that was going to keep me from setting up a table and signing autographs for everyone. A few young kids were walking around in full leathers (which was the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while). One little guy didn’t want his picture taken because he was being shy, but you could tell his parents were really excited to get a picture with him on the bike. They walked away without taking a picture, but later came back and plopped him on the seat with him playfully fighting it the whole time. It was adorable, and they were so thankful for me letting him sit on the bike to take a few pictures. I gave away a couple sponsor hats and signed all kinds of stuff for fans. As hard of a time as this sport has had in the last 5 years or so, there are still a lot of great fans out there that really enjoy what we do. I just hope that we can continue to grow the sport back to what it once was, or maybe even more than that. Getting the chance to participate in fan walks and Fan Fests gives me great opportunities to be an ambassador for the sport and for the companies that support my program, and I really enjoy doing that.

Pic 12: On the grid before race #2 after having made the decision to stick with DOT's.

Once the fan walk was over, it was time to grab a quick bite to eat and start focusing on the next race. I had already bought and mounted a new set of tires, so we just had to swap wheels, change a few settings on the bike, fuel the bike, and get the tire warmers on for the start of the next race. The sky started getting cloudy, so the crew and I decided that we would pack all the tools we needed to change tires on the grid if necessary, but we went ahead with our choice to stay on DOT’s for the sighting lap.

As soon as I got to my spot on the grid, it started to drizzle. I looked at my crew and they all had the “well, what do you think?” look on their faces, but after a quick chat, we decided that under the current conditions, it was best for me to stick with the DOT’s. I was comfortable with that decision, I felt good about it… until they declared the race a wet race. Before that point, the sky looked like it was clearing, the pavement seemed to be staying dry and water was evaporating quickly, but I couldn’t help but wonder what MotoAmerica knew that I didn’t. Did the radar show that a storm was brewing? I had no way to know, but after talking to my crew again, I decided we were making the right choice and stuck to my guns. It was especially hard to follow my instincts when 40% of the grid switched to rain tires, but I just didn’t think it was going to rain much more. Although it seemed like a lot of riders switched to rains, in reality I think some of them actually switched back to DOT’s before the start of the race.

Pic 13: The crew trying to tell me what's going on around me.

We took our warmup lap and I did my best to feel out what the track was like. The first 5 turns or so seemed fine, but the back section of the track certainly had some moisture on it and seemed slippery. We all took our grid position and waited for the red lights to go out, and once they did I actually didn’t lose any spots going into turn 1. It wasn’t my best start, but I was much happier about it than the day before and it put me up a little further in the pack. Again, I decided it was best to take it easy and let things settle down before I started making any moves towards the front. After a couple of laps, I was able to make some pretty good passes around the outside of turns 6-8 and I made some progress early in the race. My lap times never got down to where they needed to be, but since the track conditions weren’t very good, it didn’t really matter too much that I wasn’t up to speed. Through the first 10 laps or so, my crew was telling me that I had a big gap behind me and that I could focus on catching the riders ahead of me. Unfortunately, my right wrist started fatiguing quicker than I was hoping and although my crew started warning me that the riders behind me were closing, I just couldn’t make myself do what I needed to do to keep that gap and they caught me. I think at one point I was up around 17-19th position, but that group of riders caught me and I fell back to 24th . On the last lap, I was able to make a pass to take 23rd position, which is where I would finish the race. I was a little upset with myself for that finish, less because I couldn’t maintain a fast pace, but more because of crashing the day before and beating myself up for the rest of the weekend. I was extremely fortunate that I didn’t get seriously injured, but the right wrist is an integral part of what controls the bike and I just couldn’t make it move as quickly as it needed to towards the end of the race. Although I was a little upset with myself, I was also extremely happy that I finished both races in a better position than what I qualified. Conditions were tough all weekend and I think my team did a great job talking about the options and making the best decisions we could based on what we knew at the time. My goal coming into the weekend was to qualify for the races and to not finish last. I surpassed that goal with the help of a lot of great people.

Pic 14: My parents and I at the Fan Walk.

Thanks to the best pit crew on the NJMP grid for all of their help. Without their support, there’s no way I could have made this happen, there’s just so much that goes on in an event like this that it’s impossible to do alone. My wife worked hard to make sure everyone was taken care of during the weekend and she was the best looking umbrella girl on the grid all weekend. Without her support, I just wouldn’t be able to compete at this level. I also want to thank MotoAmerica for an awesome event, they are working hard to keep this sport alive in the US. They don’t have it all figured out yet, but they share our passion and they are really trying to make it all work.

I also can’t thank my sponsors enough for all of their support. Kevin from Shoei Helmets did a fantastic job making me feel like a somebody all weekend, including a visor switch on the grid for my second race to improve visibility in cloudy conditions. That level of support on top of having the best helmet in the business is unprecedented. Sportbike Tire Service has been helping me all year find the right setup and I literally wouldn’t have considered registering for this event without some inspiring words from Mr. David Grey. Moto-D Racing has been with us for a number of years now and they continue to supply us with some of the very best products in the business. During this event in particular, I can’t count how many compliments I got on my bike and our crew shirts. The crew shirt design was inspired by some awesome decal work provided by PopShadow Decals, and Axcel did a great job making the shirts and bringing the artwork to life. On 4 separate occasions, 4 different MotoAmerica officials told us that we were the best looking crew on the grid. I can’t thank those 2 companies enough for working with me and helping us work out the image that I had in my head. They did a terrific job, and I can’t wait to work with them on next year’s designs. Spiegler Performance Parts have been supporting us for a few years now too, and they have made sure we have the very best brake components on the bike, as well as helping with suspension tuning and set-up. Sidi Boots have been the only boots I have worn for nearly 7 years, even before Sidi started supporting us. They are the best boots on the market and are reasonably priced; there’s a reason I decided to start wearing them and I will continue to wear them. Vortex Racing has some of the best parts available, and their customer service is a cut above the rest. Core Nutritionals has been instrumental in helping me train to be a stronger racer. Last but certainly not least, The Motorcycle Factory, Inc. has been one of the best assets to Eric Telger Racing for a couple years now. They have great inventory on bikes and parts, and generally support us in any way they can.

To keep up with updates throughout the offseason, make sure to like our Facebook page and watch for new paint schemes, sponsor announcements, and our 2016 schedule!