Round 1, HPR, May 5-6.

Rough start! Friday practice was a bit of a nightmare. High Plains decided to work on the new patches in turn 5,6, and 8 resulting in really slippery sealant in the seams that was like ice when you went across it. Well, by the afternoon with the heat the sealant had started to smear across the race line making those 3 corners completely unrideable. Sure enough it caught me out. I went into turn 5, trailing in on the brakes lightly, and the front just folded. Pretty easy crash all in all, scuffed the bodywork and my leathers and beat up the rear set pretty bad, but nothing I didn't have spares to get fixed up. After that session we called a time out and decided to change the track configuration to use the cut off road and eliminate that section of the track. It made an earlier turn 4 that joined up with the exit of turn 8 so we didn't have to run through the messed up pavement in those turns. The new configuration ended up being a lot of fun and brought a few new challenges that were fun to figure out. Saturday I only ran Solo Middleweight Endurance which I didn't have points from last year in so I had to start on row 15 and in the second wave start. Ended up having a great time making my way up from 40whatever to 6th by the time the race ended with a red flag at about 3/4 distance. Next round getting to start on the second row should be a little better! Sunday I had a bit of wrench thrown into the program when Pirelli didn't send me a 180/55 rear tire like the bike is set up for. Instead I got a 180/60 rear. That tire is 7mm taller so it threw the geometry off. But, with the help of Dave Rose's wizardry we got the geometry really close and really close to being dialed in Sunday morning. It's not quite 100%, but it's really close and I think I can finish dialing it in during practice at round 2 at PPIR. Middleweight superbike was a fun race chasing the faster guys up front, and I ended up in 5th place. Thunderbike was the second race for me and I got to start on pole because of my points from last year. I got the hole shot and led the whole race and finished in first with about a 10 second gap. Heavyweight superbike my last race for the weekend and right from the start was rough. As I launched the bike the left clip on moved back about 3 inches. Apparently I didn't so a good enough job tightening it down when we were working on the geometry earlier. So, I spent the whole race trying to push the bar back (which didn't work at all) and struggling to turn left. I held third place for a while but in the last two laps while fighting the clip on I lost two places and ended up in 5th. I'm really looking forward to PPIR and getting some more seat time to get the bike dialed in for that new size rear tire (which hooked up amazing by the way). Big thanks to all the sponsors this year especially Oscar at Sol Performance for the Pirelli help and an extra HUGE thanks to Dave Rose with STM suspension for all the set up help, you really are a genius and wizard of suspension!

I'll have more rad pics (like the elbow down one up top) to post in the next week or so from my man John over at Wicked Photos, stay tuned!