What do I love most about racing? It’s hard to choose one aspect of it. For one, the sensation of flying. I’ve looked into getting a pilot’s license before, and hucking a bucket of bolts of a Cessna or Piper or Trinidad slowly up into the air is not my idea of excitement. Flying a fighter jet would be exciting, but at thirtysomething years old I think it’s too late for me to go down that road.
Racing a motorcycle, though, feels like flying. The term “crotch rocket” is one of the most perfectly descriptive phrases in the world; too bad it uses the ugly word “crotch.” Yuck! But, seriously, you throw a leg over, and when you know what you’re doing, you are that rocket and you can go exactly where you want to go and accelerate as fast as you dream…you are flying, even if you don’t quite leave the ground.
The other thing I love about racing is how it focuses me, and takes me away from my worries. Yes, I still might check my phone for texts and calls, yes, I still might find myself crying in my van on race mornings, but once I start changing my gearing, or put my helmet on to go on track, I have work to do and it consumes me. I finish my day feeling alive and accomplished.
I raced at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana September 5th. I drove down with my pretty blonde mechanic, Nikki Nienow. We listened to music and talked about boys. Every now and then we would stop and go over our goals for the weekend, and our task list for when we got to the track, but mostly we just enjoyed ourselves.
My bike was pretty abiding all weekend. We were dealing with a warped rotor on the right side, so there was some pretty intense chatter on the brakes going into a few of the right hand turns. But my bike just rolled with it, and so did I. Eugene and James checked in on me, which was very nice. Temperatures got up to 108 degrees during the Saturday practice day, and it was really difficult to ride. I didn’t push it, wanting to save myself for Sunday. Fortunately the heat broke and it was a much more reasonable temperature on race day.
My only goals were to do as well as I could in all my races, but I especially wanted to win Women’s Superstock. I know that Krystyna Kubran and I are in different classes, she’s a novice, I’m an expert, but these classifications are meaningless, as Krystyna’s been racing longer than I have and we constantly compete with each other (on the track – off track we’re great buddies). So I felt like I’d be really happy if I could fend off her R1 at the fast track and place ahead of her.
My first race was B Superbike. I was pretty surprised to be in the large lead pack and for them to not be totally racing away from me on the first lap. They eventually did, but I tried to bite in and hang on like a hungry dog as best I could. Pretty uneventful race until the 4th lap, when some cheeseball, after showing me a wheel going onto the back straight, made a bad pass on me into Turn 14. He just dove straight for the apex, comin’ in hot, then as I was taking my normal line I found him, nearly stopped, at the apex. I almost punted him. Jackass. That’s the first time in racing I’ve ever been unhappy with how someone has passed me, and I explained this to him with a hand gesture on the cool down lap.
He apologized, but still…
Anyway, on to the chicks’ race. We were gridded behind Heavyweight Twins Superstock, which was mostly a bunch of proddy SVs and a few Ducatis. By Turn 7 of the first lap I was leading the entire field, girls and boys. I kept expecting Krystyna to show me a wheel, or go blazing by me on the long front straight, but she apparently was having issues with worn tires and was playing it safe. It was fun crossing the finish line in first place of the whole grid.
B Superstock was the last race of the day, and I fully expected to go slower in it because I have the stamina of a cheetah. Go fast very briefly, then sleep for 14 hours. I did pretty well though and got sixth, and almost matched my best time of 1:36.3. The time is finally coming off at Fontana and I’m very pleased.
Also on Sunday, sweet Andy Chung stopped by with a brand new ACT Racing suit for me! It was beautiful! He’s so awesome, takes amazing care of his clients. Here’s a photo of me a week later, breaking it in on a street ride:
Nikki was amazing. At one point I wondered if we could take some free play out of the throttle, and Eugene was there and said it’s only a couple millimeters. Nikki chimed in with “well good, the service manual says that 2 to 4 millimeters of free play is acceptable.” She’s the kind of girl who, if she were a good cook (which she probably is), when told, “I don’t know how to cook,” might smile and ask, “well, do you know how to read?” She just dives right into bikes, service manual in tow, and figures things out. It’s very impressive.
We stopped at El Torito at Magic Mountain on the way home and decided that we would go to Great America to celebrate our victories. Here we are dragging knee through the carousel…
1 Response to WERA West @ Auto Club Speedway, September 5, 2010