Homestead-Miami Speedway July 26th-27th
I raced my 2008 Kawasaki ZX-10R at Homestead this past weekend and will race again August 30th and 31st, again at Homestead.
Homestead is fun. I has two hard braking zone and four hard acceleration straights in which I was running up the gears from 2nd to 5th. Turns 1 and 10 are 5th gear turns off the Nascar straights down to the infield. As is typical of such turns they’re bumpy and have traction changes in the middle of them. Of the other turns, only the 6/7 combination presents any real challenge. 6 and 7 are almost close enough to form a single turn but not quite. I was taking turn 6 in 2nd gear then quickly upshifting two gears to 4th for turn 7.
Saturday was all practice and was entirely about learning the track. At the end of practice I changed from the Qualifiers to the NTec tires. Yeah, enough about that.
On Sunday my first race(GTO) was at 9:30. Well, at 9:00 it started raining hard. Knowing the NTec tires on the bike were totally out of their element, I suited up and went out to see how bad the track was. There were large puddles in the middle of the corners and outside of them very slick concrete patches. I at least made it around the track and back to the pits where I sat out the race one of the other racers wasn’t that lucky, he crashed on the warm up lap.
My next race(Unlimited Supersport) was the first race right after lunch. In between the two races there was a big guessing game being played by everyone in the pits of whether to change to wets or not. Every time the rain lightened up activity in the pits would slow as racers and mechanics stepped out of the garages to peer into the sky. Eventually, I decided that no matter what the weather did the track would still be wet enough for wets. I bought a set of Dunlop wets and got them on just in time for my next race.
Since I was a late entry, I started from the back of the grid. I passed two riders going into turn 1 and then took four laps to pass the next two. I had better corner speed but I was too easy on the throttle exiting the corner to make a pass on them. As I began to trust the rain tires more, I passed both of them on the same lap and dropped 5 seconds off my laps times despite having severe fogging problems with my faceshield. With no one insight for the final lap, I finished 5th.
I had five races to wait for my next race(Unlimited Superbike.) Again there was a lot of indecision but the sun did decide to show itself and the track did dry. Luckily I was able to get the tires changed from the wets to NTecs just in time to go out on track. While my tires were being changed there seemed to be a problem with the valves stem on the front wheel. Not a problem for Randy at the Dunlop. He put a new valve stem in and I was off to the races.
The NTecs were cold, I didn’t have time to heat them on tire warmers prior to the race. Out on the warm up lap I was quite surprised with their grip but they warned me they were cold when I started getting on the gas hard coming out of the corners. I stated the Superbike race from the back of the grid again though this time there were 17 racers instead of 9 for the wet Supersport race. I was last going into turn 1 but passed someone by turn 2. I was getting faster with each lap and had worked my way up to 10th place by lap 5. But then my right hand started cramping up due to me gripping too hard during acceleration. I slowed down some and just tried to make it to the end of the race. I finished the race in 13th.
My next race was the very last race of the day, Unlimited GP. With the sun out, the track dry, and the right tires on the bike, there was nothing to do but enjoy the other races. Finally it was my turn again. When I took the bike off the stands, I saw that the front tire was flat. I went over to the Dunlop trailer but they couldn’t find a leak anywhere. They put another new valve stem in just in the previous one was a problem but by then the Unlimited GP race was already over.
So, I raced in two of four races entered and got a 5th and 13th to show for it. It was great to again race a bike built for me. And I’m really looking forward to the next race because I have a good idea on the areas I need to improve and I can improve them.
Thank you Martin for putting together a great bike.
Thank you Steve for providing me with the NTecs.
Thank you Keith and Cobie for the help and encouragement you’ve provided.
Finally, Thank you Susan for saying, “Yes.”