From: ai598@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Mike Sturdevant)
Subject: 24 Hours of Nelson
Reply-To: ai598@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Mike Sturdevant)
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 92 15:35:40 GMT



Also too long and too late. Seems to be a pattern developing.

        So I gets this call from I guy I used to race with (Brent 
Schuster). Seems he heard from Woody (my old team mate) that I might be 
interested in riding a roadracer again. This was true, I'd attended a 
race a couple weeks before going on vacation and had gotten the urge to 
try it again. He asked if I wanted to ride in the 24 hour of Nelson on a 
new Suzuki GSXR600. I said sure, when? "This weekend. And we don't have 
any scorers, can you bring some?"
        Brent also mentioned that I might know one of the guys that owned 
the team I'd be riding for - Steve Doolin. Well, yea guess I've heard of 
him somewhere. So the team was Brent, Steve, Danny Lowry (Steve's regular 
team mate), and yours truly.  
        After convincing Amy the Wonder Wife and Peter (Amy's brother) of 
the importance of having scorers, off we went to the races. Actually, Amy 
has probably hundreds of hours of scoring experience from when I was 
racing regularly. I went out to the track Friday night to help set up the 
bike's suspension and lights. Met Steve and Danny and the GSXR. Geezus 
the pegs are high. This would bother me the whole weekend. First thing 
I'd do if I owned one would be to lower the pegs an inch or two. We never 
dragged anything that I'm aware of and the seating position is just too 
painful.
        The suspension on the bike needed big time help when I got there 
but as I started to fiddle with it, there seemed to be resistance from 
the other team members. So I basically barely changed it (for the better 
I think) and rode it the way it was. The front needed more work and I 
would have raised the rear ride height if I'd a had my way but especially 
Danny seemed to be afraid that I'd make it worse instead of better. 
        Might intent in riding this race was to get out on the track on 
some modern equipment and have some fun. No pushing or racing, just go 
fast enough to get my jollies and see if I have any speed left in me. As 
it turned out, that's exactly what I did. When I stopped racing a couple 
years ago, I was to the point where I was trying hard to not fuck up so 
that the team would make money. This time I tried hard to have fun. 
        My lap times were better than I expected. So good that I tried to 
back down a bit at one point. That didn't work as I kept getting off line 
or missing brake/gas-it points. So I went back to the fastest I could go 
comfortably. I ended up being the fastest on our team and about as fast 
as most teams' second rider. A bit more speed from the rest of the team 
(shoulda let me get the suspension better) and we woulda had a chance for 
a higher placing.
        I've run a bunch of 24 Hrs. and this was the most amazing team 
I've ridden on in two ways - it was the least prepared and it had the 
least problems during the race. It was incredible. I had to steal the 
headlight bulb out of my street bike so we'd have a spare 100 W. H-4 if 
we burned it out. We didn't have a night time pit board. We didn't have 
pit lights - only a flourescent in the team area behind the pit wall. We 
had gasoline and tires and brake pads and that's it. 
        Then during the race, we did absolutely nothing to the bike. We 
put gas in it, changed riders, and rode it. We changed tires (planned) 
once but otherwise we had no time in the pits - none. At the end of the 
race, the bike looked like it just came off the showroom floor. I've 
never seen anything like it. The gods were looking out for us I guess.
        So we finished third in class (13th overall I think). I'm 
planning on riding the last Nelson (2 hour) race of the year with Speedy 
Pete on his CBR600 and maybe a race at Grattan or Summit with the dude on 
his FZR.
        And the first crashed or blown up (cheap) CBR I find will be mine.

-- 
Go fast. Take chances.

	Mike S.
Newsgroups: rec.motorcycles.racing