RAIN!!!! Round 3 HPR June 12-13

Round 3 Friday practice started with a track that was being washed off with water because of the massive amounts of mud all over it from the crazy rain the night before. It was so dirty that even after they washed it and it dried I still decided not to bother riding because I knew the conditions on Sat would be completely different. So I sat it out and had Rob over at Lithium re-valve my forks. Then it rained like hell overnight.
Saturday morning started with me running in the rain on the Pirelli rain tires for the first time ever! The tires had been mounted up on the rims once before but had never made it on the bike until Sat morning! I felt pretty good in the wet. Rob helped me set up the suspension to get a good rain setting and things felt pretty good in practice. When endurance practice came the damn track was dry so the dot tires went on and man it felt fast compared to the wet! But the dry track was short lived. It started raining about 10 min before the heavyweight endurance race so the rains went back on the bike. I had a pretty good run on the wet track and ended up finishing in 4th. I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to finish anywhere else in this class, it's the third 4th place finish in a row for HWEnd!
Sunday morning was just like Sat morning, chilly and raining, but the bike set up felt good and I was confident that I could go ok in the wet. But, when the middleweight superbike came it was a fucking monsoon out there! There was way more standing water, along with rivers running across the track, plus super heavy rain! Basically it scared the shit out of me! The result sucked, I finished in 15th, but I just wanted to finish so I could try for a good result in AmU. About 3 minutes before AmateurGTU I (and everyone else) noticed that there were some dry spots forming in the pits and when the guys from the previous race came in they said the track was drying... FUCK! Sure enough, warm up lap the whole race line was dry and the whole grid was on rains. I got a good start from the first row and got the hole shot and made it through turn 1 first, but the bike was moving around so much underneath me that I had no confidence at all and was down in like 9th before I figured out how to ride the thing with sponges for tires! I made it back up to 5th in the 3 remaining laps even though I've never had a bike move underneath me that much ever!
All in all riding in the rain is fun! The tires worked really well! I gotta send out a HUGE thank you to Rob Oliva from Lithium Motorsports for doing my forks at the track and helping me get things dialed in, it made a huge difference! Can't wait for Pueblo next month!!
carl