June 24th and 25th, 2000 - Carolina Motorsports Park, Kershaw, SC

The Race Weekend

Quick Results
Lightweight Solo 20	4th
Heavyweight Twins	3rd
Lightweight Twins	4th

Friday, June 23, 2000

I decided to ride down with Brian and Brad instead of taking my own truck. Brian's trailer is huge, and he had an extra space this time. Brian often transports bikes for other racers who don't have a truck or trailer. It works out well for all involved usually, especially if the ride is a long one. The ride to Kershaw from noVa (around 7 hours) qualifies in my book, though I'm sure there are some hardened road racers who might disagree. Anyway, we spent the morning loading up all the bikes and junk, and piled into the truck before noon. The trip was pleasant and uneventful. Brad and Brian are both computer geeks, so they talked about some of that and made me feel dumb; I called them "nerd" from the back seat a bunch of times. Along the way, we saw signs for Pedro's Rocket City and resolved to stop there on our way back; you just can't have too many explosives, I always say.

We made great time and rolled into CMP around 7:30. There was still plenty of light, so Brian and I took a walk around the track. I was extremely impressed. CMP is a relatively new facility and the pavement reflected that; smooth and in great repair, the track looked like it would offer great traction everywhere. Brian had ridden here before and confirmed that assessment. He also pointed out the line to me as we made our way around. To my mind, CMP is like two tracks in one, with two very distinct personalities to its two halves. The front part of the course is high-speed and flowing, with some nifty elevation changes. The second half is a series of ball-bustingly difficult decreasing radius corners that will have many riders (myself included) ready to kill something out of frustration. The two halves are connected by a short straight with one of the hairiest turns on the schedule, the high-speed "Kink." As you sail through it knee down at 120mph+, this is one turn you do not want to screw up. I saw it happen several times that weekend and it is not pretty.

The other strange thing about CMP is that the pit is entirely in a sand field. The pit roads are sand not pavement. This made for some dicey moments for a lot of guys as they came off of the track from their practices and races. The combination of the hellacious heat of that weekend and the adrenaline produced at speed caused a certain tiredness and inattention that led a lot of guys to dump their bikes in the pit sand. I was kind of disgusted with the set up. I hope the management'll fix that if they haven't already. Overall I was very happy to be in Carolina and looked forward to getting on the track in the morning. We set up our pit, hung out for a while and turned in.

Saturday, June 24, 2000

I registered, rolled the bike though tech, and sat in on the riders meeting. It was strange to see so may unfamiliar faces. This weekend was being run as a combined Mid-Atlantic/Southeastern region race, so most of the guys were from the Southeast region, CMP being one of their main tracks. There were some fast Mid-Atlantic guys here though. Dave Yaakov looked to be riding Team Charm's TL1000 in the mini-endurance and I was sure he would give the Southeastern boys plenty to worry about. I looked around, trying to guess who the local fast guys were. I've found that it's impossible to tell from looking at someone's face. Some of the most unassuming guys around are absolute demons on a motorcycle and some who you might think were made for a bike are slow as crap. It's a game I play anyway, just to pass the time as I listen to the course marshalls go over the flags.

Finally, it was time for practice. I rode gingerly through the pit, not liking the whole sand deal, and relaxed once I got onto the (paved) hot pit. The grid marshall told us to take it easy for the first couple of corners to let the sand get off our tires. It was only nine o'clock but it was already stiflingly hot. I was just happy to be out on the track with some air circulating. There's not much of a merge lane coming out of the hot pit, so it's necessary to get way left immediately and tippy toe through Turn 1. This is in case anyone already on track is coming down the short front straight. The next two turns come very quickly, then it's down a shallow hill and back up another into a fairly sharp left hander, then crank it over to the right, right away, and set your line for a series of right turns the track designers call Faith, Hope, and Charity. It's your basic carousel, really; they all string together so if you've set your line correctly you just gas it all the way through. Then comes a fairly short downhill straight leading to a sharp uphill righthander onto the back straight. You can go through here way faster than you think as the incline really saps speed on the entrance. I never did get the hang of it. Now you get on it hard. The bike stays leaned to the right for most of the way down until right before you set up for the Kink. Then you pitch it hard to the right, being careful not to catch your footpeg on the little lip of pavement that juts out from the crossover road on the right. Let the bike drift left, still hard on the gas, then stand it up and brake hard for the decreasing radius lefthander coming up fast. Muscle it in there...that's it--lean it, lean it! Now do the same thing to the right--short straight--now again. Get on the gas for another short straight--now hard on the brakes for another sharp right hander onto the front straight. Holy cripes! No rest for the weary here at CMP!

When I got back to the pit I was sweating profusely. CMP is an incredible physical workout, made even more daunting by ambient temps in the upper 90's and high humidity. I peeled my leathers off and tried to figure out if I'd learned anything useful. Now I sort of knew my way around the track but I could see that it would take me a lot longer than I had to really get comfortable and fast. I started sucking down the water and using my portable fan/sprayer. If I couldn't win here at least I'd avoid heat stroke.

Sunday, June 25, 2000