Summit Point, WV. 8/1/99
Given our recent experiences with attempts at driving to races, we were all grateful for an event close to home.
We were able to drive the 100 miles without stopping for anything but ice.
Max MaCallister, filled with typical boundless enthusiasm, had brought a Drack data logger to the track and proceeded to hand over a red box filled with sensors, heim joints and a rat's nest of cables. Tim has always been intrigued at the notion of not having to rely on the oft dubious comments from riders (ie "Uh, yeah, I think it's hitting redline, maybe") and has been quietly working on a data logger in his scant spare time for a few years. Having one dropped into his hands meant that the typical onerous bike set up details were left to the other mechanics as he and Max fussed over the ideal placement for rear wheel sensors and such.
Previously only good teams used data acquisition. P-Sam
It took a bit of time for Tim to get the system working but by the end of the afternoon we were generating traces from the rear wheel speed sensor. Although this information could have been useful comparing one lap with another from the same rider, we found the information was even more useful comparing laps of equally quick times from one rider against another rider. This sort of analysis would say, remind me to work on turns 3 and 4 and remind Jim to work on 8, 9 and 10. This sort of stuff helped us to avoid the trap of working on go faster in the turns where we already felt strong and instead, focus on the turns where we were weakest. Pretty neat.
Summit is a track which rewards local knowledge but, since we only race there once a year now, our local knowledge gets a bit dated. If one races there every WERA regional then one starts to know things like "where the slippery spot is on the inside of turn six where Jeffery ran over a snake on the last test and tune day" or if the "temperature is right at 93 then the patch to the left of the big patch in ten get grippy otherwise its ice" we just had to suffice with basic lines.
Everyone has an opinion.
The basic lines around Summit are still tricky enough to keep many of the other in the mediocre class at bay.
The previous year we had won our class and finished a team all time high of fourth overall. We figured that would be impossible to improve upon but, if it were to happen, we would need a few external events to happen since "ride faster" wasn't in the cards. We'd need either Arclight or SBR to crash. We'd need Firestorm to have a mechanical problem. We'd need Ten-40 to drop a few laps somewhere.
Race morning with Tapeworks, Ten-40, AOD and Arclight.
P-Sam
.Since SBR had home track advantage the burden was on Arclight and, in the first hour Arclight high sided out of turn nine. It didn’t stop them in there tracks but it gave the rest of us a head start. Somewhere in the second hour Firestorm pitted with a mysteriously vanishing front brake, a few minutes of fussing sorted the sticking front slave piston, but, by that time we were up a lap which we never gave back. We were getting ready to settle for first in class and fourth overall again, when a lapper ran into the back of the affable, consistent and predictable Mr. Cincera of Ten-40. Alas, Brian's misfortune was our gain (although pay back, we are to find at Road A, is a bitch) and, with only twenty minutes left in the race, we find ourselves on the podium for the first time ever. Not the class podium, but the overall, champagne, prattling on to the announcer, manky looking bike in front of the camera's podium. We received our trophy and drove, again without consequence, back to DC for an evening of celebration at the always hospitable Polly's Café.
The topic of discussion for the evening was "Is it more satisfying to win in front of the old hometown friends or the old hometown adversaries?" The conclusion of an hour's lofty debate was: adversaries, duh.
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Photos - Sam
Putnam Park, IN. 8/22/99
Current thinking on the origin of religion, magic, and other superstitions is that the human brain has been evolutionarily selected for the ability to create patterns out of events. This has been useful in terms of figuring out how rain helps with the corn but has also had the quirky side effect of not necessarily being able to figure out which, of various stimuli, were responsible for a particular outcome. Hence, painting pictures of buffalo on the walls of the cave might not help with the hunt, but then who wants to take chances with dinner?
Statistics goes along way towards helping us discern the varied outcomes of disease between praying to an idol and taking antibiotics but religion and other superstitions tend to pop up pretty regularly in the modern world, especially in risky endeavors. A fellow who might scoff at rain dances or transubstantiation will makes sure he has his lucky underwear on under his leathers before the GNF. The outfielder who catches 99% of all fly balls has no ritual, the same player demonstrates a different attitude altogether at the plate.
This all went through my head late at night by the side of the road as I pulled my atheist ass out of the back of the stricken van to howl at the sky "HOW MUCH MORE!"
We tried a few repairs to the van but I was exhausted from activities earlier in the week and soon admitted defeat. Pit Rhino and his keeper were not to be dissuaded so easily and, as I was relapsing into my sleeping bag all I could say was "collapsed catalytic converter".
45 minutes later I was roused my indefatigable crew to look into the melted catalyst and confirm that it didn't look like that when I put it on. Since tampering with the cat is a federal offence we had the Rhino, a citizen of the world, take an old fork tube and a mini-sledge to clear the path of the exhaust gases. This, on a van where the muffler had long since been discarded. At 2:30am the residents of some small hollow in Ohio got to enjoy dreams of NASCAR success and we confirmed the straight piped van was back up to full power with a couple of quick through the hollow. Built V-8s make a lot of noise. I couldn't help but think that the race shop who built the motor for us were feeling vindicated with our un-muffled run across the midwest.
To get things off to a good start I almost high sided myself into the wall (ala unnamed other RW editor) in the first practice. Jim was rocking hard and fast right off the bat. John couldn't make the race due to family business so Jim and I amused ourselves by trying out some new Michelins and shooting some on-bike video. The last lap of our first practice is up on the website (www.armyofdarkness.com) so if you want to drive your ISP nuts and learn the wrong line around Putnam, FTP away.
Jim started the race because he was riding faster than me but struggled in two ways for the first hours. He struggled because the bike was chattering now when it wasn’t before…and he struggled to communicate to us that this was a problem. Eventually he chattered himself right off the track, took a short cut through a field and generated a black flag for himself. We took advantage of the stop and go penalty to ask him what all the gesticulating with the hands was about. "Front tire sucks" is all he said before we pushed him back out into traffic.
Thus informed we contemplated our options. We had used a new trick front in practice and, what we thought would be a more conservative front in the race. The bike didn’t like the conservative front so we did a pit stop, switched riders and front tires and the problem disappeared as had much chance of finishing towards the front. Endurance racing being what it is, we were not the only team to have some trouble. Another Yamaha mechanical problem dropped the Sharkskinz team (they showed up with a Suzuki at the next round) and towards the end of the race it looked like it was going to be me and Scott Carpenter battling for third place.
He was riding one of Arclight's old bikes, which is faster than ours, and he was riding, and he's faster than me. We were sharing a canopy and, since I knew he was going to take my trophy, I started giving him as much grief as I could before the bikes were turned over to us for the last ninety minutes. Scott proved to be as good-natured as well as fast. Our bikes came in, we went out about thirty seconds apart and I never saw Scott although he was ahead on the track. However, their bike proved to be a little more thirsty than mine and ran dry on the pit road with five laps left in the race. The bike was slow to restart after running dry and I slipped by in blissful ignorance to steal third place. Scott proved to be as sportsmanlike as he is good-natured.
The van didn't break on the way home.