peanutbritt, britt arechiga, britt bohannan, little big racing, 125 racing, peanut britt, wsmc
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 Sheila
guards the pits
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 While Dinky begs me not to go
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 Team shirts front view
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 Dinky sleeps below my dirty socks
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April 30 - May 1 USGPRU We took our airstream trailer out to Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the first West coast round of USGPRU races. We had to borrow our friends truck to pull it since our van brakes suck so bad. Arrived at 3am Friday morning and parked outside with the other trailers, since the gates were locked. 6am we awoke and waited for the gates to open, as we were told they would open at 6. CCS pulls up at 7am to open the gates. We have until 8am to unload, set up, register, tech, buy feul, warm tires and be ready to get on the track. The weekend was mostly a tough one. The good parts: The dogs were with us, the weather was nice, my bike motor was tuned nicely, lots of old friends showed up, the turnout was good, we had a couple fun dinners with everyone. The bad parts: I could not get a suspension set up. Either the bike ran wide, was unstable on the brakes, squatted on corner exits or didn't turn in at all. My bike overheated due to a water leak somewhere that we could not see. I got exactly one hot lap for qualifying, and was an abysmal 17th out of 30. My start in the race sucked. I couldn't do better than a 1:29.09 in the race since the forks would bottom and I had to brake early to have control. I was mostly alone in the race after lap 2 or so, could see those in front of me but couldn't catch them. I finished 16th. Jm worked his butt off all weekend on my suspension. I ended up borrowing a spring since the one I had now seemed to be too soft. I had been riding around all this time on an 8.0 spring with no adjustability, so I finally got a spring that should be correct for me (6.5) but now the valving of the shock may only be correct for a heavier spring. Sheesh. Thank you Deb Kuick for the use of the spring. Thank you Leigh at Fluid suspension for the phone support. Thank you Al and John Hjelm for digging through all your parts for me, and then mailing me springs later. Thank you CA Race Services for the tires. Thank you Jim and Monique for the use of the truck. Most of all, thank you JM for being pit bitch the entire weekend. |
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13-15 WSMC This race got a writeup in the WSMC May Newsletter A better weekend for me but still no bike set up. JM had to work at Infineon AMA races so I stayed in our friend Rich's trailer. He finally has another race bike, we are glad to have him back at the racetrack! I struggled with setup all weekend, had four different people helping me and no one agreed on what actually was going on. At one point, two guys had exactly the opposite diagnosis: One said too much preload in the forks, the other said not enough. JM tried to help all weekend via phone as well. I would call him every hour telling him what was going on and he would try to figure out what to change to help it handle better. Not an easy task. On race day, the bike was rough and very difficult to ride. I had little control under braking and it wanted to run wide in the corners. I finished the 250 race placing 8th (on my 125) and as I am sure anyone who encountered me after that could attest that I was very, very frustrated. I nearly did not run the F3 race, but Brandon Davies has a great attitude about racing and when he stopped by to talk, it rubbed off on me a little. I decided to run it regardless of the bike's handling and to try to ride as hard as I could around the problem. I knew I would have to get a good start since passing would be hard with so little control. I got the best start in a long time and lead the race for the entire thing. I tried to relax but mostly had to hold on. The bike bottomed out and I scraped pegs, bodywork, toes...everything that usually never touches the ground! THe funny thing was that it was very windy, I felt a big gust through turn 8, and I remember thinking that the wind blowing me offline and upsetting the bike was the least of my worries, in fact I hardly noticed it. Jay pilster ran a slightly fast lap than I did (1:31.63 to my 1:31.74) but I still won five seconds in front of second place. Thanks Brandon Davies for the encouragement and the offer to ride your bike. Thank you Joel Manes for the same. Thanks Rich for letting me stay in the trailer, for the ice cream, and for dropping all my crap at my house at 9pm on Sunday night. Thank you JM for the phone support, advice and flirting via text messages all weekend long. |
 Heat rising off the track  Can my position be any worse? Look at the bike squat on that exit |
