March 2006
This month was good. I got to the track early Saturday and met my buddy Alex. We have a GARAGE for the whole season! Nice. We got going fairly early, and I did a few sessions, but still not able to make the Dunlops work on this bike no matter what I try. I have raised the rear, raised the front, raised the front and rear, lowerd the rear and raised the front, and nothing keeps the front stable at speed. It really sucks when you are going about 140mph and the front of the bike starts to go crazy.
It started raining Saturday afternoon so we chilled in the garage and worked on stuff.
Sunday the weather was OK for early season at Willow, no rain and not too much wind. I was in race three, F-40 Heavy weight and I got spanked. I got 9th, and my best time was a 1:36. I did better on the BUELL! Bike is just not going in a way I am comfortable on.
Later in the day I had BOTT Heavyweight and I wanted to get out of this rut so I changed to Pirelli's, re-set the bike to nominal rear settings and middle of the road compression/rebound front and rear. Bike felt WAY better. I got 8th, but in a much larger field, and a best time of 1:34. Still not as good as the Buel, but basically this was ground zero with tires and suspension.
The last race was Formula Twins, weather was much worse as the wind had come up quite a bit. Had a pretty hard time of it, came up 6th with a 1:35.
My times in the last two races didn't show it, but I shure felt a lot better on the bike. I remain optimistic. I am going to do Las Vegas, classic course with Fast Track before I got to the next race. I hope to spend the day working suspension setting with the new tires and bike geometry. We'll see how it goes. April is double points so I need to get my butt in gear.