Music City Madness

Nashville. It’s my new home, and it was the home of round three of the WERA Mid-Central region Sportsman race series. This was my first race back after my…recent unpleasantness at the Winterrific Tally round. I’d done a track weekend since, and the bike was back to 100%. My body had healed to the point where I didn’t think my injuries would be a factor for the races. My confidence was ok, but I’d be lying if I said I had no pre-race weekend jitters.

My Dad and Step-Mom came to town for the races, arriving on Friday afternoon towards the end of the practice day. I’d had a few good sessions, and I could feel my confidence slowly returning. It was clear though, that I had a longer row to hoe than I had thought in the days leading up to the weekend. I was more tentative on the brakes, and much less confident when it came to passing slower bikes. It was great to have my family in town, their presence going a long way towards keeping things light and fun. Also, I pitted with Ryan Nelson and Gil Cutchen, and having friends around made the whole thing…better.

If you haven’t guessed by my tone, I wasn’t my normal jovial self, and I was feeling a little bit stressed. I wrote it off to a general lack of confidence, and continued on with my weekend…more on this in a future post.

Anyway, practice went pretty well, and while my times weren’t great, I got down to 1:12’s which is faster than I’d ever gone there by a couple of seconds. Of course, the only other bike I’ve ridden at Nashville was my old 400, and I did 1:14’s on that, so I was hardly ecstatic. But, I was riding well I thought, and I was confident that I’d have more come race time.

The Saturday race schedule held just one race for me, the Middleweight Solo 20. This is a sort of mini-endurance type of thing…really, it’s just a 20 lap sprint, but it’s got a different name to differentiate it from the 10 lap sprints that are held on Sundays. I like solos because the longer race distance provides some useful track time. I generally do my best to not worry about ‘racing’ per se, and just get some quality track time, and this race was no different.

To that effect, I didn’t bother with new tires, as I was pretty sure the ones I was running had plenty of life left in them. It turned out that they did…for about 8 laps. After that, I had a few slides, culminating in the longest rear end slide I’ve ever had, while exiting the long left-hand sweeper that leads up onto the tri-oval.

Remember my mentioning the whole ‘I’m all healed up’ thing? Well, Nashville has a unique feature to it. Because the track uses both the tri-oval of the NASCAR speedway, and an infield road course, there are transitions one must deal with to and from these disparate surfaces. The transition off of the front straight/tri-oval is taken at something North of 135 or 140 MPH, at a slight left turn angle. This transition was like a little hammer whacking my still-healing left ankle every time I crossed it. By the time I’d run 7 or 8 laps of the solo, the ankle was starting to hurt enough to be a distraction. That, combined with the slides, told me it was time to pull off, which I did. At the time I was running roughly 9th, and I’d gotten down to 1:10’s, so I was pretty happy with that.

Sunday. Rain, and lots of it, it would turn out. The morning was one of those annoying rain/dry/rain/dry times where you have no idea what tires to put on. I got one damp, useless practice in on DOT’s, and then the skies opened. Luckily, I had a set of brand-new Bridgestone rain tires ready to go. I’d never ridden on rains though, and the warm-up lap for C Superstock would be my first time.

The traction generated by rain tires is astounding. Unfortunately, by the time I convinced myself of this, the race was almost over. I started to reel in some folks, and finished 12th I think. With each lap being about 2 seconds faster than the one before, I was bummed out that I didn’t’ get to practice on the rains.

Curiously, my lack of experience on the rain tires led me to have the most relaxed, fun race on the 600 so far. Why was this? Well, I had absolutely no expectations of placing well, and simply road around and enjoyed learning the tires. In any case, I’d always prefer dry, but in a way, I’m looking forward to my next rain race, just to continue to explore the whole rain tire thing. It really is amazing…I’m sure that given a few more laps I’d have been dragging a knee in several spots. In the rain. Cool.

After the race, I had little time to prepare for the C Superbike race. But, as the rain continued to fall, it occurred to me that I’d be really sad if something silly happened and I got hurt, what with the Barber round coming up the very next week. As that round is my favorite on the calendar, I decided not to risk it, and I packed up.

As I drove home, I wondered why I was so tense. It was like I could remember my unbridled enthusiasm for racing, but I wasn’t experiencing it. I chalked it up to my still-smarting confidence, drove the rest of the way home, and made it in time for The Sopranos.

On to Barber.