April 15-16, 2006  WSMC

I’ve been thinking about the concept of success lately. Last weekend is a perfect example of the term’s ambiguity as it relates to our beloved sport. Let me illustrate with some perfectly accurate quotes.

“Last weekend was quite successful. We found a direction for chassis set-up on the new bike, and got solid points even with an almost show-room stock bike.”

“Last weekend was very unsuccessful, as I ran 3 to 4 seconds off my normal race times and missed out on valuable points.”

“Last weekend was successful. We ran a stock bike with no set-up pretty slow but didn’t scratch it.”

I’m sure many of you are saying, “Yeah J-M, anyone can see that success is only unambiguous when it correlates to one half of a single pair of outcomes.” Granted, but since when is racing success that easy to quantify? If that’s the case, then my goals of running in the top five in all my classes weren’t met and the weekend was unsuccessful. I’m hoping that my goals were unreasonable, giving me some wiggle room, but you be the judge.

Friday was supposed to be the first day on the new ZX-10R Kawasaki I will be campaigning this year, courtesy of South Bay Motorsports in National City and Team Green Kawasaki. Due to the availability of the bikes, and the length of time to get the paperwork finished, I took possession of the black beast on Tuesday the 11th, only 2 and half days before the race weekend.

Many of the race parts for the new Kawasaki’s are in short supply or are not ready yet. I had bodywork backordered, as well as case covers, frame savers, power commanders, race exhausts, fork internals, rear sets and a host of other stuff. What I had was some gearing, brake lines and an Ohlins shock, courtesy of my friends at Ohlins USA. Due to some very appreciated help from my Dad and my buddy Jim “The Sniper” Gominsky, I got the bike safety wired and pressed a turkey pan into service as a fluid trap for the lower. Very high tech!

Friday morning, with four hours of sleep under my belt and cruising down hwy 138, a racket commenced right in front of the steering wheel and when it became silent I had no brakes. Or rather, very little braking, as the vacuum pump went out on the Super Duty diesel van. I limped into Lancaster and went to the Ford dealership. $500 dollars later and about 4pm I had the black bomber back. Scratch Friday practice.

Saturday I began riding the thing, breaking it in using the time honored method of wringing its neck after one lap to make sure there were no leaks. Immediately two things became evident. The first was that the bike was f-a-s-t. The second was that it was not handling well at all. It had no grip at the rear, and even at moderate speeds it felt like the rear end was going to come around on you once it was on its side. It felt like there wasn’t enough weight on the rear, so I shortened the shock, then shortened it again.

A note here, as one of the issues this weekend was the fact that I couldn’t modify the forks before the race. I weight 225 at my lightest, plus gear, and need a pretty stiff set of springs to counter act that kind of mass. Normally I race with a .95 to 1.0 spring rate in the front. The Kawasaki ZX-10R came with a .94 rate last year, but only a .85 rate this year. Go figure. As a result, anything I did had to live with a front end perpetually bottomed and blowing through the stroke any time it felt like. It is very hard to rip through turns eight and two when you feel like the bike isn’t predictable.

Another problem was that my very high tech fluid catching lower (read turkey pan) was dragging everywhere, and so I had to come in and figure out a better way to mount it. I had it attached outside the fairing to keep the lower cooler due to the heat the catalytic converters put out, but crossed my fingers and installed it inside the lower. I put heat tap all over it and nothing caught fire, so I guess I did ok.

Sunday morning I practiced on session, felt a tad better with the new rubber, and waited. My first race, Open Superstock, really sucked. I really blew the start, although I can’t blame the bike, as the clutch is awesome, but rather that I never practiced a start at all—too much to do to stop and do that in the time I had. As a result, I was 20th or something into turn one, and slipped and slid into 12th by the end, never running faster than 1:28s. Embarrassing, really.

The afternoon brought some relief, as shortly after my race Brienne Thompson got airlifted to Kern Medical Center due to a turn eight crash, and we were all pretty upset until we got the good news that she was stable and progressing nicely. My second race, number 13, was Open Superbike, and I tried a different technique to start and ended up with a nice 12 O’clock wheelie for my troubles. Dead last into turn one was my reward. Before the race I looked at two other ZX-10R racebikes and noticed that they were running quite a bit more ride height than I was, so I went the opposite direction. It helped some, but my confidence wasn’t bolstered enough to go much faster, as I was worried about how viciously it had come around on me in the first race and kinda cruised. 11th place was where I crossed the line.

My last race, Open Mod Prod, followed the same pattern, with me finishing 10th at the end of the eight laps. In my defense, the stock bodywork is worth quite a bit as it’s on backorder at the dealerships, so if someone crashes their street bike, they’re gonna need my stuff. I didn’t want to ruin it trying to race at my normal pace when the bike was sketchy at best, and pretty much just cruised. So, lot’s of excuses, but the results remain the same, total suckage.

I was pretty bummed until I realized that the owner’s manual had led me astray. If only I wouldn’t have followed the instructions so carefully. Take a look at the photo and see for yourself….

Until next month,
DK