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My racing buddy Gavin asked me how he looked going through turn 3 at Laguna last weekend. I answered dead-pan fashion, “Looks like you put on a few pounds…” He spit up his Gatorade.
Racers can be terrible to one another. So terrible it’s beautiful.
This will go down as the greatest race weekend of my 24 season. I’m sure of it. The banter, the challenges, the excitement – I’m already sad it’s gone.
In the last AFM race my bike broke. After winning race 2, without changing a thing on the bike, suddenly it violently shook at speed. I had to pull off, out of the lead of race 3. If you know me that’s kind of a big deal, pulling off. I finished a race at Loudon once with a bent rim and flat tire. Trust me this “Never surrender” attitude of mine is a blessing and a curse at times, admittedly. But this shaking was too much, I saw broken parts and bones ahead. I surrendered to the violence.
In the rush to make this next AHRMA Laguna weekend in just two weeks’ time - a race I have been training for since February – I assumed the worst. The motor was sure to let go. I turned to my bike’s best friend, Alex Hernandez, at CalMoto. First thing Alex said is, “I don’t think it’s the motor. It’s something else.” For this very reason I brought the bike to him fully assembled, so he could ride it himself. He rode off smiling and happy, on a hot summer day. He returned pale and expressionless – like he’d just met the Devil himself. I asked what he thought. He answered without pause, “Grab a wrench, this motor’s done.”
We finished the bike with three days to spare. That’s early for me. But first practice Friday I saw the Devil again while flying under Laguna’s infamous turn 1 bridge – a wide open, blind-bending cresting hill of a turn, purposely designed to scare the life out of anyone who dares to not back off.
It wasn’t the motor.
We changed sprockets, the chain, the cush-drives, we checked bearings, we searched for cracks in the frame, we torqued motor mounts, swingarm pivots, we swapped shocks, etc. etc., on and on. Nothing changed anything.
Here is where you might say, “Why not check the tires?” Remember, race 2 AFM the bike was perfection. Race 3 it was hell. And nothing was changed in-between those two races. So obviously something had broken. …Or had it.
Driven by desperation I approached a man I’d never met or heard of before this day, Joe Karvonen, the owner of Kramer USA. I introduced myself as some random guy who races a KTM, I showed him great respect, and told him the story of my shaking Superduke. He looked back at me, calmly, as if he only half-realized who he might actually be talking to (Joe was the father of a garage full of Kramers on the hunt for specifically my Superduke) and said, “Check your front wheel. We’ve had similar problems that also showed up in the rear, but surprisingly originated at the front.” I walked away with even more respect for him, and new hope, directly aimed at the balance of my front tire. But even if it is the balance being off, I thought, how was the bike so perfect in race 2 before turning so bad in race 3? So I asked Derek, my other KTM pit-mate, one more time, “Are you sure we didn’t change anything between race 2 and race 3 last weekend…?” When he answered, “Maybe the front tire,” I knew finally we were onto something.
I brought all of my previously mounted and balanced wheels and tires from that last AFM weekend, to the Bridgestone tent instead – to be re-balanced. They carefully checked each one before tearing off the weights and starting fresh. Turns out every one of them were “Grossly out of balance.” And that was it. The motor build and swap were unnecessary. The money, the time, along with every other thing we checked and changed. Our dark cloud of doom, temporarily at least, had been extinguished.
Lesson learned – never pay a competing tire company to mount and balance your Michelins.
I could have been upset. Even pissed would be appropriate. But all I could think of was the races just ahead – each of which I would now have to run without one lap of valuable practice.
The build-up to race 1 Saturday wove itself through my gut like a fire breathing serpent, squeezing life from any hope of confidence I might muster. Having no practice does this to me. I try but fail to ignore the sound of my competitor’s motor’s screaming up the front straight, while I sit there nursing me or my bike back to health. They get faster as I get slower – at least that’s how it always feels. And then there are the head games. Like I said, racers are terrible to one another. Saturday morning, before we’d solved the shakes, after weeks of struggles and still no running bike, there on my dash I found a tiger-striped puppet perfectly placed to remind me of the hunt. Not the hunt that I am on for them, but the hunt they are on for me.
One of my fiercest most powerful competitors in AHRMA is someone I affectionately refer to as “Tiger Boy.” He races a World Superbike spec Panigale Ducati that really is one of the most impressive machines I have witnessed. He has mechanics, trucks, coaches, sponsors, family, you name it. On top of that he’s got this thing about Tigers. And, apparently, GoGo - which is definitely “A thing” in his world of racing, or so I’ve been told. So now maybe you understand the significance of me finding a stuffed Tiger on the dashboard of my war-torn Superduke. It’s twisted. And disrespectful.
…And I Ioved it.
Starts are my specialty, typically, but not on this day. I lost so many positions at the drop of that flag, but I battled back and entered turn two just behind the Tiger. Once green flags drop my gut-wrenching serpents transform into drive and aggression. It doesn’t happen on purpose, I’m a friendly guy most of the time, but once that flag drops I become someone else. Perhaps that’s why I love racing so much. Confidence eludes me most other places, still.
I crawled my way to the outside of Tiger Boy, taking the long way around him through 2. Once my tail was clear of his nose, I stormed off in a blaze of tire shredding madness until finally they waved the checkered flag in honor of “The Little Superduke That Could”. I nearly fell off my bike with joy.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; Winning means nothing without losing sometimes, too.
Saturday night my son Matthew flew into Monterey, to reunite this team we started together decades ago. Even though it was almost 20yrs since, Matthew remembered the stories of Tiger Boy like not a day had gone by. So we stopped by Walmart and shopped for a little puppet love of our own that night. We bought a Tiger and a Mule, with plans to join them rather specifically.
Once Derek’s new wife Kaela carefully stitched them together for us with safety wire, we handed our creation to Shane Turpin – a good friend, great racer, excellent coach, and special double-agent part of Tiger Boy’s crew. I made Shane promise one thing before he snuck off. “Send me pics.”
Like I said…. Terrible yet beautiful.
Stay safe and happy. Life is too short,
GoGo
