Actually this could be entitled Race Report #1 since it's the first weekend on the new CBR600RR, and the first weekend back since blowing up the F4 at Road America so long ago...

Many weeks preceding:
The bike took shape from the show-room floor to track ready. The changes can be viewed here. I also ran a single track day to get a bit of feel for the bike, and comments on it can be read here.

Wed 7/16/03:
I had everything packed and ready to go with the exception of the bike. I had been hoping my mechanic would be able to re-map the fuel injection with the new PC-III USB. However, he ended up being stuck on a few other items which took precedence, so I loaded a zero map in and headed to the track.

I didn't get into the track until around 10:30 pm, so I just unpacked what would be necessary to ride for VisionSports Racing School on Thurs.

Thurs 7/17/03:
I slept pretty well despite an increasing breakout of poison ivy covering my body from dirt riding last Sunday. Up with the sun, and I started unpacking the rest. I went out for the first session, and spent it scrubbing in the new rear and getting more familiar with the RR.

The day went very well, and it was money well spent. I put in around 175 miles, and my lap times continued to drop. However, they weren't dropping fast enough. I was stuck about a second off of my last-year times which were about 4 seconds from where I NEED to be since the track was just repaved. Super Dave and his crew took a lot of time in answering my questions and providing me feedback on my riding.

Fri 7/18/03:
Gorgeous weather again, and poison ivy continuing to invade my being. There isn't enough calamine lotion in the world to stop this itch, I'm considering lowsiding naked in order to scratch the itch...

Practice day went GREAT. Alas, I'm back down in to last years times, and consistently so. The bike handles great after making a few geometry changes in order to keep it planted through the turns. It now turns effortlessly, and stays down while on the gas through turns.

At the end of the day, after another 200 miles, my rear tire is shot. It finally started sliding, and there's no way it will make it through the weekend. A quick call to my crew chief (wife) and a new rear is on the way.

I shed the old tires and put on a set of used slicks which I figured I could get a few more miles out of during Saturday's GP and GT races.

Sat 7/19/03:
Perfect weather again, and we're ready to race today! I'm a bit leery about launching the new bike since it is completely different from the F4. However, after some launch practice on Thurs/Fri, I think I'll be okay.

The track is packed with multiple professional riders cherry-picking the Yamaha contingency dollars available this weekend, so I'm pretty much writing off the possibility of placing up very high.

Middleweight GP:
I line up on my row 2 outside grid spot and wait for the flag. Flag flies, hammer drops and we're on our way. Surprisingly, I got a great launch and was about 5th into turn 1. I tip the bike in, drop my knee to the inside concrete banking, elbow out, about 10 feet from the apex and WHAM!!! I get HAMMERED!!! The bike washes away from me, and I get a quick glimpse of a blue and white R6 as it runs me over.

My forehead hits the ground and my body then flips/cartwheels length wise so I'm on my back sliding to the grass.

I get up just in time to run out of the way of the amateurs coming from the second wave start.

Over to the bike, and I'm FURIOUS. I wanted to be the first one to crash her, and it was taken away from me! I picked her up, and pushed her out of the way. After a brief inspection, the corner worker clears me back to the race. I go about 1/2 way around the track and realize that my head is absolutely not in the game, so I pull back down into the pits.

Glancing at the bike, I have to say it crashes remarkably well. See, the F4 being so top-heavy, in every crash, would spin around and then flip over. Not so on the RR. It held its direction and stayed on one side across the track and in the grass.

The Yoyodyne frame sliders are a piece of perfection! Something I hadn't noticed, but now realized is that the slider mushrooms stick out the same distance as the Woodcraft-CFM rearsets, so it was sliding on a flat point versus any angle. Extremely low damage... Nothing needs to be replaced before racing again.

Looking closer, I began to dissect the crash. From my leathers, I can see what happened. I bent into the corner, had my right knee down, right elbow out. The R6 planted his front tire RIGHT over my right thigh, under my right arm and then into my gas tank. As it hit the gas tank, it washed the bike out from under me and the bike and I went sliding.

I have huge rubber marks across my leathers, and had a fat rubber mark across my tank shell as well. The tank shell cleaned off easily, but the leathers are marked for life as a reminder of where I was run over and left for dead.

At this point, I must pause for a few quick thank-you's.

1. Thank you GOD for somehow getting me through that crash without any injuries. I don't know how I could have possibly come through unscathed, so I have to give props where they're due.

2. Thank you Audrey from Moto Liberty for the awesome support in my Fieldsheer Tattoo suit which held up 100% under the front tire of an R6. Without a doubt, inferior gear would have had me at the med-shed or in the hospital.

3. Thanks to Woodcraft-CFM and Yoyodyne for your superior products.

Still quite angry, I tracked down the guy who hit me. We talked about it a bit, both agreed that it sucked, apologized and we went on our ways. In the end, I'll chalk it up to experience and again, thank God that everything ended up so remarkably well.

I work my best to get my head back in the game, and prepare for the next race.

MiddleWeight GTU (30 minute timed):
Still on the used slicks, I head out for the long race of the weekend. My launch was okay, still needs some work, but it wasn't too bad. Coming around the track on lap 1, I find the guy who ran me over, hung up behind another rider. I go past the two of them into turn 6 (right hander), and want to leave a bit of track in case the front runner decides to stay along side of me as I round the corner. I pass the apex and open the throttle. The rear slick proves to be much worse than I had anticipated as the bike lights up and pitches sideways. The rear end spins out about 2 feet before catching, spinning and sliding again. The process repeats 3x before I finally straighten it out and get on my way. Both of the guys I passed, pass me back while I'm busy sorting out my mess.

Mental note (1), add many clicks of rebound to the rear to slow it down.
Mental note (2), rear tire is shot....

I spent the rest of the race somewhat bored in that the best times I could do were 1:19's due to the rear end getting real loose. The pro guys who were there for the contingency $$$ were breaking the lap record with each lap. They drove it down into the 1:10's in this race, and on Sunday dropped the bar further to 1:09.87 (from previous 1:12.xx).

I had considered coming in, but thought I'd stay out to get the miles on the bike and a bit more track time. I finished the race in the back 1/3 of the pack. It was somewhat disappointing, but it wasn't for lack of my abilities...

After coming in from this race, I've made the determination that I will stick to DOTs this year as the bike was set up perfectly for DOTs, but the geometry was all off for slicks. A quick swap back to DOTs and clean the bike up for the night. My neck growing increasingly stiffer from the morning's crash.

Sunday 7/20/03:
Stiff neck, covered with poison ivy to a horrific degree (my shadow even itches), we begin the day. Mom & Dad showed up to cheer me on, the day remains overcast, threatening rain in the afternoon.

Practice runs fine, making a couple more fine adjustments to the suspension to overcome problematic areas on the track. Times back down in the 17's. This whole lap time thing is really eating me. The experts I run with are now in the 13-14 range on the new pavement, and I'm stuck 3-4 seconds back. Most of this is due to still using my OLD braking and reference points from last year when the track was as bumpy as a flight of stairs. Add to that, the extra 10hp that the RR has over my old F4, and it's a tough thing to overcome.

Sportbike:
This is a new class which I decided to run today. Basically it's a stock supersport race, but with weight limitations.

I grid up, get a very good launch and we're on our way. The race went very well. My lap times continued to drop and drop. Alas I broke into the 16's. Consistent 16's had me finish this race in 6th place. Not too bad, but still needs some work.

MiddleWeight SuperSport:
With a very large grid, experts and amateurs combined in a two-wave start, +60 bikes on the track prove to be a little difficult. By my 3rd lap, I'm into lapped amateur traffic. Navigating through them I do fine, without scaring myself or anyone else. Again, the pro's pack the podium and round out the top 10. I'm somewhere in the middle of the pack across the line.

MiddleWeight SuperBike:
Final race of the day, final day of the weekend. I'm shot, both physically and mentally from the last 4 days and ~600 miles on the bike. All I wanted to do was run consistent laps and finish the race. I did so, but could have been much faster. I ran into problems getting hung up behind a guy and failing to find a decent spot to pass him at. His R6 matched the RR for power, so I couldn't get him on the straight, and he was only slightly slower in the corners, so I'd have to really stuff it past him to get around, and my heart simply wasn't into it at that moment.

My lap times were in the low 17's, and I was comfortable with it. Then I found a quicker way through turn 1...

Down the straight, into my braking point, one finger on the lever (as always), I squeeze and begin banging down through the gears. As I go down through the gears, I always blip the throttle open in order to sync up the transmission and rear wheel speed for a smooth transition. Into turn 1, I drop down 3 gears. On my 3rd downshift, as I blip, my finger slips off the brake lever. This launches me forward with the massive power of being high in the RPM range. In the time it takes me to realize what happened, I'm down to the turn. No way I'm giving up, I bend it in and pour it on. The bike sticks like glue, and I prove to myself that I'm going WAY too slow into turn 1.

As I finish out the race, I don't want to slip my lever again, so I begin braking with 2 fingers. This is absolutely no good either since now I'm braking WAY too hard/soon, and then need to accelerate TO the corner! It ended up working okay, but was really goofy and didn't feel right at all. My old brake lever had a spin type adjuster which I could move on the fly. This new lever has a knob which requires two hands to manipulate, so I was stuck. I finished this race again in the back 1/3...

Weekend Wrap-up:
I had a good time, and was actually glad to get off the track. I've determined that 4 days is one day too many. Perhaps if I was back in the swing of things it wouldn't have been so taxing, but I've been off the track and out of practice for 2 months now.

I really need more time on the track and to focus on making the track shorter in order to pick up times. I also need to swap out the OEM brake pads for a set of EBC-HH-KIT pads. The OEM pads are decent, but they don't have the progressive bite that the EBC's do. I'm also going to swap the existing RR front brake lever for my old F4 brake lever as I believe they're shaped a bit different, and I can adjust the old type lever on the fly.

Little things make a huge difference. Sometimes it's 1-2mm of ride height, other times it's a quarter turn of rebound. This weekend I learned a lot about the bike, and believe I'll do much better next round because of it. Our man-machine relationship is developing quite nicely.

Again, huge thanks to the Lord for keeping me safe through another weekend. Special thanks to Mom & Dad for coming down to see me. As always, much thanks goes out to my wife Jennifer and our two kids for putting up with all of this and cheering me on along the way. Thanks to Super-Dave Rosno and the VisionSports staff. Thanks to Audrey and MotoLiberty for the Fieldsheer Tattoo suit that saved my hide. Thanks goes out to all my sponsors and contributors who continue to keep me in this sport. And last but not least, thanks goes out to all of you who cheer me on and keep my spirits up!

Final parting thought. Poison ivy sucks... Forget mustard or VX gas, fill a warhead with urushiol and detonate that over a populous area. 1 day of prednisone has had zero affect so far. It's still getting worse. If no change tomorrow, I'm going back to my doctor and asking to be put down.

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JeF4y Racing (quick poll. Should it now be JeffeRRy racing?) is proudly sponsored by:

Lake Country Powersports - For all your Honda/Suzuki/Ducati needs!
Hi-Side Racing - Race products, for racers by a racer!
Scotts Performance - Steering stabilizers & reusable Stainless Steel oil filters
MD Racing - Kyle Gordis measuring/alignment system, Race bodywork & engine building
Moto Liberty - All of your gear needs, street and race!
Sliderwoman - The place for Pucks
Silkolenestore - Only the best lubricants for my CBR600RR
Trackside Engineering - Suspension first, everything else is secondary.
Sliderphoto - Making riders look like professionals!
RevLimiter Racing - One stop racing shop!

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