Putnam Park: April 20-21, 2013, MCRA

A lot has changed over the winter months, including a new bike/set-up and a new track rig. I expected the first weekend of the year to be an eventful one, and I wasn’t disappointed.​
 

We packed everything in the hauler on Thursday night so that we could go to work, come home and immediately head towards Indiana. Everything went as planned, and we arrived at Cloverdale RV Park around 9pm local time. We set our alarm for bright and early… actually it wasn’t so bright because it was so early, but we arrive at the track around 6:20 am and waited in line to enter the track. After finding a suitable spot to set up, we got to work unpacking bikes, gear, and tools. Of course, we are bundled in our sweatshirts, gloves, and winter coats because it’s a wintry 30 degrees outside. Setting up the rig was effortless; so much, though, that I felt like I was forgetting something. In the past, having a camper and a separate trailer made things a little more difficult, but I’m quickly finding out that the purchase of this toy hauler was entirely worth the cost.​
 

I am control riding for MCRA this weekend and have no real plans on racing due to very limited set-up time with the bike, as well as virtually no seat time on the new bike. I wanted to take advantage of the time I was getting to feel out the power delivery and suspension of the new bike. After a few sessions of control riding in the novice group, I took the bike over to Trackside Suspension and Engineering for help getting a baseline set-up. Scott immediately noticed that there were some issues with the front end, so we got to work trying to figure it out. After making a few changes, I went out for one more session to see if the changes improved the set-up. After I came back to the pits, we saw that the changes made really had no effect on the issue. I decided to take the forks off and have Scott tear them down to inspect them. He found some things that could be contributing to the issue, but at this point it was still unclear. I got the forks back from Scott by the end of the day on Saturday, and was able to put the bike back together to ride on Sunday. Due to the track’s policies, everyone had to pack up their stuff and either go to a hotel, or to the RV Park, so we followed suit and went back to our campsite.​
 

Again on Sunday, we woke up to a black sky and drove back to the track, only to wait in line to enter the track. We got there a little earlier today, so I decided to close my eyes because they were a little heavy. Before I knew it… the nice lady at the entrance who makes you sign in knocked on the truck window and woke myself, my wife, and my dog up from a nice nap. Porsche didn’t like it… I thought she was going to jump out of the window at the lady. We signed in and moved into the track and set up where we had set up the day before. I was anxious to try the R6 today; I thought we had made good progress on Saturday, and was optimistic that we had made the right changes. Well… I was wrong. TSE wasn’t able to stay for Sunday, so I was there left to scratch my head by myself. However, Scott and Mark had given me some tips on what could be done if their changes didn’t work, so I made those changes and wouldn’t you know it, it worked. Now, these changes aren’t absolute fixes, they were a band-aid attempt to isolate the problem, but seeing that it worked gave me a direction that I needed to go in to correct the issue. By the end of the day, I was running pretty well on the R6, and started to gain some confidence in the set-up.​
 

The only other issue to speak of is a tuning issue. Because it was so cold, the bike didn’t want to stay alive until it was warmed up. This is definitely an issue, but one that should be pretty easily solved when I take it over to Jerry and WFO Motorsports. Jerry is one of the best in the business, so I am confident he will be able to work out the 1’s and 0’s on the computer and get the bike tuned correctly.​
 

I would like to thank all of my sponsors for helping me make this year possible, your help goes a long way in helping me meet my goals for this year. We have a lot to do in a 2 week time-frame, but we will do whatever we can to make sure it gets done and that I am able to show up to Grattan ready to put on a show and battle for race wins.​
 

I’d also like to thank my wife, she puts up with a lot of abuse because of this hobby of mine, and she is always there making sure I get fed and am taken care of the best she can.