After not riding anything since the end of November, and not riding the 450 since 2008, I felt I was a little rusty. I picked up the bike on Thursday, and dropped it and my trailer off on Friday. I couldn't stay on Friday to practice, as I had some family stuff to tend to, so Saturday would be my first practice.
Saturday morning I roll up to the track a little late as I had to get a nice little 12 mile run in before the day began. We unloaded the bikes, set up the pits, and registered. Walking through the pits I'm noticing 3 things. The first being the most race entrants I've ever seen at Streets of Willow. People were pitted from the garage all the way to Horse Thief Mile. It was amazing. The second amazing thing was that most of those entrants seemed to be Ninja 250's! The last thing I noticed was that all those Supermotard people who were saying they'd show up weren't there. I was pretty disappointed that there was only 1 other SM guy at the track on Saturday, and he was mostly riding his 600 that day.
Practice started, and I was going SLOW. There was a bit of new pavement I needed to get used to, which caused a few other issues just away from there. It took about half the day but I started to get my bearings again. Also a bit of coaching from Ed Sorbo helped as well. Ed has this thing where you can pay him to be your pit crew, coach etc.. He's really good at it, and its great how he has a knack for making you think. He doesn't tell you the answer, he tells you something and its up to you to think your way into it. Good stuff for sure! Practice was pretty funny for me. I was mostly riding by myself through a sea of ninja 250's. It was like an ant farm of those things, and I just rode through them as best as I could, all the while laughing inside my helmet. After practice we had a really big crew head over to Ramon's for the usual post-practice feast. The whole day was good times for sure!
Sunday rolled around and I was entered in 3 races. Went out in the second practice session, and got to hound Andy Palmer on his mega-650 thing. We had a good laugh about our little dice later. It was pretty funny but we got into some more ninja's after about 3-4 laps. Andy caught one just at the start of the kink. I really had nowhere to go unless I slowed down, so I stood up, and BRAP jumped the curbing past the rider. This was just silly, but hey.. Maybe I'll need that maneuver in future races. I'd say that's a first for me for sure. WOW this 450 was turning out to be fun! The first race up for the day was F-Twins LW. Stu and I gridded our 450 dirt bikes against SV's and those EX-650's. Craig turned the board sideways and I was like.. GOOOOOO!!!! I jumped the start so bad I was practically in turn 1 before the field left. I had joked earlier about doing this, but this is the first time I've been able to time it like that. After a couple of laps I got the meatball flag, and knew I had to stop/go before continuing. I went from 3rd to 5th as a result. Either way, I didn't care, it was pretty funny to me and we all had a good laugh about it.
Next up was the Singles Group A race. We were gridded up behind some of the Dinosaur bikes when the flag dropped. I got a pretty good start and was leading our race into turn 1. It took a little bit, but by the end of the first lap, I had gotten around the Dino racers. The rest of the race I spent managing where Stu Smith was behind me. He was faster than me in a couple of spots, and I knew that, so I had to do things to make myself wide. I know he was probably cussing at me in his helmet for sure, but we hi-fived and laughed about it when it was over. I finished 1st and Stu finished 2nd.
The final race of the day was SuperMotard. There were a few of us on the grid, in front of the Ninja 250 classes. I got a good start with a holeshot into turn 1. The race for me was pretty uneventful until about the 3rd lap. Stuman was really catching me. I had a good lead on him for a while, but he ran me down and was looking for a way around. Stu threw everything but the kitchen sink at me to get around, but I was doing a real good job of holding him off! We got into the lapped traffic and I did my best to use this to my advantage. It wasn't much of an advantage as Stu was being just as aggressive as I was through the traffic. At one point Stu got by me in the skidpad, only to have me run him down on the straight. i could see he had a camera on so flipped his cam the bird as I passed him. It was pretty funny for sure! On the last lap, I was on the skidpad passing a lapper on the outside, and I could see Stu going for the inside. At the exit, the lapper started to run wide, and pushed me almost to the dirt. I beat Stu to the line all the while smiling in my helmet.
I'd say this was a great first round of racing at the Streets this year. The turn-out was impressive for sure. I had a lot of fun out there, and am excited to race there again later in the year. Huge thanks to Andy @ West Coast GP Cycles for giving me the Yamaha 450 to race for the weekend. Danny "DangerDog" Sillett for being my crewman for the weekend. Without that dude, I'd still be trying to get those wheels on, and I'd have probably run out of gas! Also thanks to Ed Sorbo for the coaching/feedback, that was awesome for sure!! Thanks to the rest of my sponsors as well. Yamaha, Pirelli, NJK Leathers, Sidi Boots, GPR Stabilizers, Attack, Pit-Bull, Driven, and Concept 5.
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