This was by far my favorite WERA event of all time. Instead of the typical 6 hour endurance, they had opted to make the schedule a double header weekend. Points for USBA would only be issued for sunday’s race finishes, so we only had to race sunday but with limited practice. I spent most of the day Saturday supporting my friends who were racing and visiting with riders that we only get to see for WERA weekends. I ran into Preston from Proformance Dyno Tuning saturday afternoon and he offered to put the 675 in the dyno truck for some diagnosis. We spend the rest of the day removing and adjusting things only to come to an unfortunate diagnosis: the fueling system is not delivering fuel properly for large changes in throttle position. I would have to just ride it as-is again this weekend and diagnose the issue after the race weekend.
Sunday’s racing was great, and my schedule had me free most of the day. I got to help out the boys at RickDiculous Racing on their new 675 effort. I made some small changes to the bike and checked some pressures, kept the tank full. We sent Mario out for his race and heard shortly thereafter that he had crashed in T5. The bike came in on the truck and i immediately started trying to put it back together. It was in pretty bad shape. Mario’s dad let me know that they were transporting Mario to the hospital, so i stopped trying to get the bike going for his next race and instead focused on getting everything packed up and secured for the night.
Once i was done, i got ready for race one. With WERA racing alongside us, i had a lot of competition. The fueling issue made it tough to stick with them, but i put my head down and chased as hard as i could.
Race two was a bit intimidating. I got to my grid postition on the second row of Heavyweight Superstock and looked behind me to find more rows than i could count. In the row behind me was the other race gridded with us, and I identified all of the front row of their race as being AMA pros, including Melissa Paris. I got a mediocre start and found myself examining Melissa’s new swingarm wrap graphics through T1. I chased as hard as i could, but again needed to open the throttle much too slowly to be of any threat to anyone. I did improve my entrances trying to catch everyone, hopefully that sticks for the rest of the season.
The good news is i have a place to start for round 5, but am disappointed that i couldn’t get it sorted out for this weekend.
