2008 Race Program, April and May Summary
Consistency seems to be coming slowly. It was really windy in April and May, but my times were pretty consistent. The bike is working all the time now in pretty much the same way. No surprises and that is great. I am not sure if it is the Michelins or the setup, but I am going to stick with the Michelins and see how far I can go. Their contingency is really consistent and easy to use also. By the third race of May I ran consistently 1:30 which given the conditions and my prior pr\performance, was about 2 seconds faster than I expected. Now I need to get two more. I also ran the 748 again in BOTT M/W! This was it's first track outing and things went pretty good. I ran at the Streets and again at the Big Track. I don't know what happened, but the front suspension no longer works on that bike. I think the carbon tank and removal of a lot of other stuff really changed the bike because now the front end is WAY too stiff. Anyway, removal of a lot of preload and compression, addition of a lot of rebound, and stiffening up the rear has made it a lot better. I managed to get to 1:26 at the streets which is about 4 seconds away from where I think I can get, and about 6 seconds away from where I need to be. We'll see, but I want to race BOTT M/W on that and keep going with H/W on the 999 for the rest of the year. I think I am starting to get the hang of suspension tuning maybe.