Daytona – End of a Season

The Daytona 8-hour race weekend began in its usual stellar fashion for R & R Racing, i.e., front forks for the #76 bike lost somewhere in the mail system on their way to Canada for rebuild; Brett driving straight through from Illinois and arriving at the track at 8:30 AM; paint still wet on the #76 bike bodywork; and everybody wondering how they’ll make it home if we don’t win some prize money.

Mad scramble to unload the trailer, set up the tents, get the stickers and numbers on the bikes, make all the adjustments, safety checks, tech inspections, dyno runs, rider’s meetings and the hundred other things necessary to prepare for afternoon practice.

Gridded up for practice – Mike on the #76 in back at right and Paul on the #37, second from left.

Practice went pretty well, nothing important fell off and no one was hurt, and the expected happened, such as the forks on the #76 bike need rebuilt and the rear shock needs re-sprung. The #37 bike needs stiffer front end and the rear is really squirrelly at speed on the banking.

Brett chooses to skip his turn on the bike, as he is pretty beat from the all-night drive and no sleep the night before. As his 20+ years of racing history includes a couple of laps on this track, a few laps more or less won’t really change much, except the track has been reconfigured a bit in the horseshoe entrance and infield exit. I expect he will pick that up quickly his first couple of race laps.

As the practice goes into the dark for a while, the riders notice that the #76 bike has a serious problem with headlight glare on the windshield. We are running the stock Aprilia windshield on this one and it has a small lip on the top – actually more of a small bead to give it strength. Unfortunately, our decision to mount the lights just in front the instrument cluster and behind the windshield caused a “fiber optic” type light transfer to this lip, and while it was an amazingly interesting display of light transfer phenomena, the riders all agreed that it was a “little” distracting – as in totally blinding! Running a piece of black electrical tape across it really didn’t seem to do much, so a decision was made to mount an extra light outside on the fairing. Hitting the bright-dim switch would turn the double lights (and glare) on, allowing passage though tech inspection and providing a nicely balanced photo-subject opportunity. However, for real world use, a flick of the switch turned off the cool pyrotechnics, and gave us a usable, albeit ugly, farm-tractor type light.

Naturally, the #37 bike again lost the light providing capability of its right side light, even after my best efforts in rewiring and bulb replacement the week prior. Incidentally, the little Halogen bulbs melted a place on the windshield on this bike, even with our best efforts of heat shield application. Another bulb replacement and rewiring attempt was made Friday night, but this light failed again during the race. Seems to be a pattern here.

Additional Friday night frantics included the removal of forks and complete rebuild as well as re-springing the rear shock.

Saturday’s short morning practice was ushered in with the usual Daytona-Practice-Rainstorm, and Brett wisely decided to use the time to reinstall forks, shocks, etc. and attend to last minute race preparation. His thoughts are that if the forecast for the race is not pretty definitely rain, then practicing in the rain only hurts you. Different braking points, corner entry, as well as a completely different riding style would not translate into anything usable in a dry race.

Afternoon saw the usual scramble to get the bikes out for the race. The track officials seem to think that 15-minute lead times for everything are a lot of fun. The P.A. system will boom out an announcement that everyone should set up the pits and get the bikes on the grid, as the race will start in 15-minutes. This results in a homesteader-land-rush-mad-scramble by some 400 people, all wanting to get tool boxes, coolers, tent awnings, tires, bikes and everything needed for the next eight hours set up and organized on pit row. This also happens after the race too, where an announcement that all riders are to report for photos is accompanied by the order to clear every thing out of the garage area in 15 minutes. It reminds me of Marine Corps boot camp.

Dave will start the #76 bike and Paul the #37 bike. As they take their places on the grid, everyone goes though a starting checklist; tire pressure, brakes pumped up, fuel . . .?

Fuel?

Paul takes a couple of fingers and shoves the dry-break down and gazes down into the empty tank just as they wave the crews off the grid and start the bikes out for the parade lap. He yells that he’ll be in a lap or two for fuel.

Dave in the first laps on #76 – note the “tractor” light just above the number

And off they go – with Paul starting 10^th and Dave 12^th. By the end of the first lap, Dave is in 2^nd place and will take the lead by lap 4, where he will pretty well stay until the first pit stop at lap16. By now he has already set the fastest lap of the race (as usual) on lap 9. He exits the pits in 8^th place and takes the lead again on lap 28, only to dive back into the pits on lap 30 for fuel, new rear tire and rider change. The bike comes back out in 5^th position and holds this steady until lap 72, when Mike pushes it back into the pits from the Horseshoe where it has left the best part of the new engine, replaced after the same experience at Homestead in April. End of the day for Dave, Mike and Darrin.

Photo courtesy Kenn Stamp, editor Two Wheel Freaks

Meanwhile, we return to Paul’s plight, having begun the race with an empty tank, he drops a couple of positions – probably distracted by the bright “Low Fuel” warning light – and ducks into the pit on lap number 5 for the left behind fuel. He hasn’t hit his groove yet, so tells Brett to take over. Brett exits the pit well back in 37^th place and goes to work making up time, passing someone almost every lap. By lap 25 he’s in 17^th position when the comedy of fuel errors continues.

At Daytona, the pit boards have to be at the entrance to the Horseshoe as the main straight in front of the pits is too far away for signaling. Radio or even cell phone communication to the pit board holder is used to signal when to notify the rider of scheduled stops, etc. Usually, we have had several of the crew wife’s handle the boards, but today there is a “newbee” filling this position who misinterprets the call to signal Brett to pit for fuel as just a reminder to call the pit crew when Brett signals him that he needs fuel.

For want of a nail the shoe . . . and all that.

Being rather astute, Brett picks up on the communications problem pretty quickly when the engine suddenly dies from fuel starvation at close to 180 mph on the back straight, just before the chicane. To keep momentum going, he really blazed through the chicane. Normal entry to the chicane is made by very hard braking, and entering a bit slower so that the exit line can be straightened some, allowing for hard acceleration back onto the banking. Brett’s “out-a-gas-keep-it-going” line required no braking, and entering the chicane at high speed and cutting the exit corner a bit through the grass, front tire chattering all the way through and trying to slide out from under him.

Back on the banking he was able to lean the bike back and forth enough for the fuel pickup tube to sip a bit of fuel now and then, keeping some on-and-off power going, until it quit for good in NASCAR-4 turn. He coasted down the banking onto the “loooooong” pit entry and helped it about halfway down pit row with some one-foot, scooter style pushing. He ended up having to get off and push it the rest of the way, from about the tunnel on.

John on the usual one head-lighted #37

Back out with a new rider, now down to 34^th place. Back up to 25^th to the lap #48 pit stop, and back out to struggle up to 19^th position, which held until the stop on lap 64, where Brett once again took over.

His lucky day continued, with a stuck clutch while attempting to leave the pit. The bike revved, but refused to go. Pulling it in and releasing it again, got it to barely move forward until it suddenly caught, standing the bike straight up in an exaggerated wheelie. Clutch in and down it came, and he finally got under way. Of course there was a black flag waiting for him at the start finish line, the next time around – indication of a stop and go penalty for wheelies in the pits.

Short explanation/excuse here.

The officials insisted on using the overhead flagman’s position for the race, even after protests in rider meetings that they were unable to see the flags there. AMA, WERA and CCS races used a ground flagman at Daytona, but Moto-ST wanted the overhead stand used. Rider’s complaints that the flag was lost in the visual background clutter of the main grandstand – when they could relax enough to look up. Normal conditions required looking left, away from the flag stand into the slight dogleg at that position, preparing to stand hard on the brakes for turn one, and coming up on slower traffic at over 50 mph closing speed (in the case of our class.) All this fell on deaf ears, as Moto-ST is owned by the same group that owns the speedway. And, “By God, that’s our flag stand and we’re gonna use it . . . ”

The bottom line is that Brett went happily on his way, never seeing the black flag until a corner worker put up a large white sign for him at the exit from the infield back to the banking. He then did his stop and go penalty, however – as the rules only allow 2 laps after a penalty flag to serve that penalty, he forfeited the additional laps that he had taken, making it a 21-minute penalty, dropping the bike back to 32^nd place. He did get in an “up yours” by picking the bike up in a wheelie upon entering the track at the completion of the stop and go, holding it through the short straight at the Horseshoe exit.

The rest of the race was relatively uneventful for Brett, Paul and John on the #37 bike (if this type of activity can ever be called uneventful) with one exception.

Remember last year, when Brett didn’t have a clear visor and ran his night stint with a dark visor? He had some good stories to tell about that! This year, he picked up Arai Helmet as a sponsor, who furnished him with new shiny head covers and spare visors. Now, remember the mad scramble to get set up at the race start? As Brett prepares to do his night shift – no clear visor. Probably back in the truck, or on the beach, or back home – who knows? But he did it once, so . . .

Photo courtesy Kenn Stamp, editor Two Wheel Freaks
Here’s Brett geared for battle – dark visor and all.

Last year there were many complaints about the back straight, most noticeably the chicane, being very dark – especially for those fools with dark visors. This year a really bright light was mounted to shine across the track at the chicane. Unfortunately, it was a very directional type light and the experience as described by our dark-visored wonder boy was: “It was so dark on the back straight that when I saw the brake markers go by – 3 -2 and I really stood on the brakes and started to turn into the chicane, I then got into the light and found I wasn’t really there yet and had to get back on the throttle to get to the turn-in. Then it was super bright through the chicane until you exited, where you drove out of the light and it was suddenly totally black. Made for some interesting racing, but nothing a great rider couldn’t handle.”

. . . Or one with a clear visor. <sigh>

Go here for a close look at what goes on in our pit stops.

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