CSC Round 3, Willow Springs, Part 1

There’s a place downtown,
Where the freaks all come around.
It’s a hole in the wall.
It’s a dirty free for all.

Ke$ha, Take it Off

This song always reminds me of Willow Springs International Raceway, and some of the scenery in the video reminds me of it too. Racetracks are notorious for being in god awful places. So called “normal” humans don’t want to listen to the glorious sounds of an inline four motor screaming at 16,000 RPM, so they put racetracks in places where people don’t live. Hot, ugly places. Bad places.

Places like Rosamond, California.

So not only is Willow Springs in a typically awful, unglamorous place, it’s a gnarly, mean racetrack. “The fastest road in the west,” with the fastest turn on a road course west of the Mississippi, turn 8. Imagine being on a motorcycle with the throttle turned all the way around to where it won’t turn anymore. In fifth gear. And then, don’t brake, just lean the motorcycle over, put your knee on the ground and look ahead for the next corner.

If you’ve never ridden a motorcycle before, it’s kind of like flooring the accelerator. Not so scary in a Toyota Tercel, but imagine flooring a Ferrari. Or your boyfriend’s M5. I can’t even do it in my Toyota Tundra, a huge, V8 truck with a beast of a motor.

So you’re on a motorcycle that’s like the speed equivalent of a Ferrari, flooring it into a turn at well over 100 miles per hour. A funny thing about crashing a motorcycle, it’s not always such a big deal at the racetrack, at least it hasn’t been for me. I take crashing extremely seriously, but the times I actually have crashed, it’s almost always been a non-issue. I slide, or I bounce, and then I get up and collect myself and my motorcycle.

But, every time I’ve seen someone crash at Willow Springs, it’s like, once you and your predictably sliding motorcycle leave the racetrack and hit the dirt, you fall into this evil blender that twists frames, breaks ribs, and does other very bad things.

The turn after turn 8 is turn 9, also a very fast turn, but it’s really just turn 8 tightening up. Then you’re on the straightaway, crossing the finish line, and looking for turn 1 again.

My best laptime at Willow Springs was a 1:30. It’s a 2.5 mile course. That’s an average speed of 100 miles per hour. See all those turns? A freaking HUNDRED miles an hour.

But I’m just trying to scare you, and maybe scare myself a little bit too. It really doesn’t seem that fast when you’re out there in it, and race bikes don’t usually have working or accurate speedometers. But turn 8 seemed as fast as it was, and trust me, it was very scary. Friday practice, my first day there in about a year, I either moaned a little bit or maybe even said “oh god” every time I tipped my R6 into that huge, sweeping right.

The California State Championship was created by Shandra Crawford, and her vision was to encourage western U.S. road racers to travel outside their comfort zones and try racing at some new tracks. There are a handful of race clubs out here, and kind of like clubs, people tend to just stick to their own. So the CSC races one round with WERA at Buttonwillow, one round with the AFM at Infineon in Sonoma, and one round with WSMC at Willow Springs.

Infineon and Willow Springs are like polar opposites. Willow Springs is fast, and Infineon is tight and technical. To do well at all three tracks, and in the overall California State Championship, isn’t really easy. People who race at Willow Springs typically only race there, and they are very good at racing there, but then they come to Infineon, my home track, and they struggle. And vice versa.

I was struggling with the speed, for sure, but it was mostly the fearsome nature of what lies beyond the racetrack edges should I venture off course. I was also exhausted. The night before, Nikki and I were woken up at our Holiday Inn Express in Lancaster by a high volume, shrieking sound. Disoriented, we both strangely first thought it was our air conditioner, or a computer, making the noise, but once we woke up a little more we realized it was a fire alarm.

We efficiently threw on some clothes and hustled outside. 2:30 a.m. A bunch of creepy dudes hanging around, and one was sitting his huge ass on the bench, smoking a cigarette. We sat quietly on the edge of the curb. After a few minutes, Nikki spoke. “No fire truck, no fire men, no fire. I’m about ready to burn this shit down.”

Eventually a truck actually came. And we eventually solved the mystery. A lovely lady who was clearly under the influence of a mind altering substance had pulled the fire alarm, convinced that her nephews were dying because of the drugs she was doing in front of them in their hotel room. At one point she started scaling the wall of the hotel to get back up to the fourth floor where they were, she said. Oh, and there was no fourth floor.

It really kind of set the tone for Willow Springs. It’s not a place a girl goes alone with her motorcycle; I had my mechanic, bestie and racing teammate there so we could look after each other. I was hoping to win the California State Championship Formula Femme, and finishing first or second in the women’s race would seal the deal. But to finish first…you must first finish.