Well, Round 1 was a terrible disappointment. The bike stopped running and I missed all of my qualifying races Saturday and so we packed up and left Saturday night. I did manage to get licensed however and we also did the endurance racing Saturday, so it wasn't a total waste.
Friday - SOAR Race School
Arrived bright and early Friday to about 5°C and light mist...which turned to heavy mist...which turned to something that could only properly be called rain. Everything was soaked and I didn't bring enough warm clothes. I had two hours of race school classroom time in the morning, which was very useful - answered all of my outstanding questions about starting procedures grid assignments, flags etc. But the building was unheated and I was wet and actually shivering during the class. The classroom instructor was Mike Bevan, a top runner and previous champion in Expert Superbike, and he was just great.
Here is what our pit area looked like after the class:
After lunch all of the race school students had to do some laps with an instructor following to make sure our lines were safe and that we weren't totally incompetent. Problem is the track was still about 80% wet and several of us had only slick tires. Fortunately for me I also had the endurance bike handy wearing Q3 street tires, so I took that out with the instructor. The instructor had race DOTs on, which must have been kinda spooky in those conditions. After I had done five or six laps I went back to the pits to wait. He eventually showed up and said "I am very tentative in the rain and you left me for dead out there, so you can consider yourself licensed."
Hooray. I guess....
Eventually the track dried up, but when I started the Ducati it was running very badly. A bit of a shocker because the bike has been very reliable (except for the oil cooler thing....) and was running great two weeks prior at practice. We found some issues with the battery connections and got it running well again. By that time it was pretty late so I didn't even set up the timing beacon or record any video. The track layout was "Reverse Screaming Alien" which I have some prior experience on, and I felt like my times were probably okay, though certainly not the 1:10s I was hoping for.
I got registered with Bridgestone for the tire contingency program, and put the stickers on the bike. It was looking even more bad-ass and I went to bed very excited.
Saturday - It all goes pear-shaped
To make a long story short, when it was time to go out for Saturday practice (on a nice, dry track) the bike wouldn't run. Now it was actually turning on the check engine light, but I had left the connector cables for my diagnostics software at home so I couldn't check the codes. I spent the whole day Saturday wrenching the bike, trying everything I could think of, and making runs into Exeter for parts (fuel filter, plugs). This is how the bike looked during my qualifying races:
It is hard to get more pathetic than that. I was just frantic, at first hoping to make the last practice session, then hoping to make qualifying, then just hoping to get it going for Sunday and start at the back of the grid. No dice.
Eventually I just had to admit defeat, throw down the tools and concentrate on the Saturday evening endurance race on the Gixxer. That was quite a bit of fun and at least I got some practice with passing under (low intensity) race conditions. After that we had a beer and a hotdog, then broke camp and headed for home a day early.
I am extremely disappointed because, looking at the lap times others were doing, I am pretty sure that I could have been reasonably competitive in both of my sprint races. On a happy note, a friend of mine on a Triumph 675, also a first year racer, decimated the field in the 600 Rookie qualifying race. Way to go Brodie! Still waiting for the Sunday results to see how he finished.
So, how did we do?
Reviewing the list of "realistic goals" for Round 1:
1. Get licensed - Check!
2. Don't crash - Check!
3. Turn some practice laps in the 1:10.x range - Uh,no....
4. Don't embarrass myself in the sprint qualifiers or races - Never had the chance.
5. Have fun - Meh. Froze my butt Friday morning, spent 9/10 of Saturday frantic and frustrated. So I'm gonna say "fail" on this one.
Definitely a failing grade overall. Hopefully it all gets sorted for Round 2 in three weeks. Diagnostics led me to an electrical fault to one of the fuel injectors and the bike is now running again. You can be sure that it will be started and run on pretty much a daily basis for at least a week to see if it misbehaves again.
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