Greg's Corner

Racing at Homestead August 30th/31st.

Homestead-Miami Speedway
August 30^th-31^st.

August was a very busy month for me.  Thankfully my wife, Susan, and my mechanic, David, took over and made things happen that needed happening.   A huge thank you goes out to the two of them.  Without their dedication neither I nor the bike would have been ready for the race.

After July’s race, I realized I needed to work on some specific items to get faster.   So I arranged to take the California Superbike School as a student at Barber Motorsports Park on August 24^th.  That meant my schedule for August went like this:

·         Start painting the bike using paint cans on the 6^th.

·         Coach at the California Superbike School on the 13^th and 14^th at New Jersey Motorsports Park.

·         David and Susan finish painting the bike on the 15^th.

·         Attend a track day on the 16^th at Jennings GP track in North Florida with David and his friend Louis.

·         On the 17^th I drove to Miami for a six week plus contract with Microsoft.

·         On the 18^th, David and his friend Louis Schumacher start repainting the bike using Louis’ professional paint gun and paints.

·         I drive back to Clearwater on the 22^nd.

·         On the 23^rd, David, Susan and I drive to Barber Motorsports Park with the bike to attend the California Superbike School.

·         On the 24^th, I attend the School and then David and Susan drive back to Clearwater with the bike.  I stay and coach with the Superbike School for two more days.

·         On the 26^th I fly back to Miami.

·         On the 29^th, David, Chrissy – his wife, Kobe – his son, and Susan drive to Miami with the bike. 

·         On the 30^th and 31^st we race.

All that work paid off.  The bike looks great thanks to David, Louis, and Susan. 

Thanks to the track day at Jennings and being a student at the California Superbike School, I bettered my times from last month by more than 3 seconds a lap – 1:34.6 to a 1:31.5.  Better yet, I wasn’t getting tired running the faster laps.

Saturday was a practice day.  I ran in three sessions and worked my way down to 1:31 lap times – 11^th fastest expert and 13^th fastest for the day.  The faster experts were running 1:27s so I’ve definitely improved and am only 4 seconds off instead of the 9 seconds I was last month.

Sunday we had to deal with Hurricane Gustav’s outer bands.  It would rain and then start to dry out and then rain again.

  The first race at 9:30, a 25-minute race called GTO, was held in the rain.  With rain tires on the bike I was running 1:47 lap times and finished 7^th in the race.  My lap times were slower than my previous best rain laps last month of 1:42. 

During the race the rain stopped and the wind was drying the track pretty quickly.  I carefully looked at the latest radar on my computer and estimated that my next race would be a dry race so David put DOT race tires on the bike.  Unfortunately one of the races prior to mine was red flagged (stopped) due to a multi-bike crash and the race schedule was changed.  Instead of my race happening before lunch it was now going to happen after lunch. 

About 15 minutes before my second race, Unlimited Supersport, it rained again.  Without time to change back to rain tires I went out on the DOTs.  On the warm up lap it seemed OK.  The racers on rain tires weren’t pulling away from me anywhere. 

When the green flag dropped I even had enough traction to wheelie off the line.  Going through turns 2 and 3 through I quickly realized I was in trouble.  By the time I got to turns 6 and 7 I was convinced I had a flat rear tire.  I pulled off the track at turn 8, inspected the rear tire and determined it was fine.  By that time of course I was not only in last place as an expert, all the amateur racers had gone by too.  I finished that race in 12^th – last place for the experts.

With more rain coming, David put rain tires back on the bike and just when that was starting to look like the wrong decision, rain came in.  When you have rain tires on you want rain!

This race, Unlimited Superbike, went much better.  I passed a couple riders on the opening two laps and battled with another on the last lap.  He passed me going into turn 3 and then almost crashed 4 times trying to stay in front of me.  Held me off and I finished 7^th.

That was the last rain race.  The wind dried out the track fairly quickly and DOTs went back on the bike.  The last race of the day was Unlimited GP.  There were still a couple wet spots on the track in very bad places and I was about 5 seconds a lap slower than the leaders.  I finished 7^th out of 10.

So the results are:

GTO – 7^th

Unlimited Supersport – 12^th

Unlimited Superbike – 7^th

Unlimited GP – 7^th

A good weekend in that I’m improving and the team is coming together.   Next race is the big one – Daytona, October 16^th through the 19^th.  I’ll be racing in five races spread out over all four days.

Thanks to Steve Brubaker of Race Tire Services for the excellent Dunlop tires.  I definitely could not do this without his support. 

Thank you Louis for volunteering to paint the bike with your paint gun and paints.

Thank you Chrissy Bruce, for taking pictures, lending me your husband, and helping out as needed.

Thank you David Bruce for your tireless (OK, you were tired but you made it happen) work in painting the bike, driving, working on the truck, changing the tires and everything else.  Awesome!

And of course, thank you Susan.  I love you.