Racerdude RACE round 2 report

Well the plan was to get a good start , didn’t really quite happen like that and Jamie Barkley and Steve Hoffarth got the jump again , I was left to fight it out with Stu Picklington for 3rd, I got the best of him on Saturday in the heat race , but looking back now it looks like he was setting me up or maybe he found some extra speed when it really counted. I passed him going into turn 3 on the first lap and try to put my head down, but I wasn’t going as fast as I wanted. On the 3rd lap Sebastien gave me the “you have a medium gap” sign from the pit wall, but I had a feeling that gap wasn’t safe. On the next lap I got the “he’s right on your ass” sign from pit lane. Stu easily went by me on the back straight utilizing the gsxr 750’s higher output... and the chase was on for the last 2 laps, we both did our fastest laps of the weekend on the last 2 laps (both going faster than Jamie in 2nd place) and I tried to stuff it inside and block his drive on the back straight but all I did was kill my own drive and I had to settle for 4th . I don’t feel like I gave it my all out there and I was slow the first 2 laps and gave Stu a chance to catch up to me. Congrats to Stu , Jamie and Steve on a good race, Steve was just in another league all weekend getting down into the 1:54’s on his 89 ZX7, must be that Ninja power like he says… BTW he qualified ahead of me in AM Superbike when I was on my state of the art 07 GSXR 750 so that shows what I have to deal with on my hawk… tracks just can’t get tight enough… Maybe if it rains…

Speaking of the Am Superbike, I was feeling a little overwhelmed after the qualifying session, times are way fast and riders way competitive. To be honest I wasn’t having that much fun pushing hard to be in 20th place. My friends in the pits were giving me a taste of my own medicine, telling me to just go out there and have fun… I wasn’t convinced… I was starting from the 6th row, 2 rows behind Maxpat. I got a terrific start (almost/maybe too terrific) and past about 5 guys before turn 1 and a couple more on the outside of turn one. 2 guys got back by me in the early stages but I could see Pat a couple bikes ahead so I focused on fallowing his pace. His tires were pretty much cooked after the 600 race so he was just sliding enough for me to keep up. The guys that passed me also past him and I was now right behind him, I had a front row seat to all the slides and almost running off the track in super fast turn 6. We both did our fastest lap of the race on the last lap and I finished about 5 feet behind him. I had a notion to dive inside into allen’s, but he was protecting the line and I didn’t want to take a chance like that for a spot well outside the top 10. We ended up 14th and 15th , this race was a lot of fun and was happier with my progress in superbike then I was in the challenge.

Congratulations to Francois for his great 3rd place finish in LW sportsman, he really had to work for it after a bad start and I think he would of got 2nd place if it wasn’t for the red flag. (BTW get well soon Nicole).

Its now on to the Nelson circuit for the first round of the VRRA on June 4th 5th and 6th.


Most of what my friday and saturday looked like, Dad put his own bike aside to help me get going.


Close up for the sponsors :)


Virginie took some nice shots with RdKetchup's camera


Steve was unstoppable in the P4 challenge and takes the points lead going into round 2