When: October 7 - 9, 2005
Where: Gingerman
John and Tammy Dempsey invited me out to ride John's backup bike at Gingerman. I was running 4th in the Infinity 125gp championship and had a good chance at 3rd place for the season. They were driving down with John Crook and were bringing the bikes anyways, so I agreed to head out and got the arrangements made.
Thursday 10/6
Took a flight out of Boston Thurs night, got a car in Chicago and drove to
Michigan. Met up with John, Tammy and John Crook at the hotel. We hung out for a
while. Eventually we got some sleep.
Friday 10/7
Got the track Fri am and set up. 12-7 open track practice. The only problem was that it
was 48 degrees and cloudy. The tires on the bike were pretty beat up, so after the
first practice I managed to borrow a set of wheels with some lesser-used Bridgestones (I
usually use Dunlops and didn't want to burn the new set I had lined up). The first
turn after pit out (T3), I ended up on the ground. Absolutely no warning. I got on
the brakes before the corner, got off the brakes, leaned the bike over and next thing I
know I'm sliding across the pavement. I hadn't even turned the throttle. It was a
bit humorous though.. since I was on John's bike and he was right behind me at the time
*laugh*. I only bent a clipon and collected some dirt, so I got the bike back to the
pits, got it fixed and finished out the day without furthur incident.
We went out for some dinner, went back to the hotel, and I was asleep before my head
even hit the pillow.
Saturday 10/8
Sat was even colder than Fri.. 45 degrees and cloudy. I skipped morning practices
and went out in the afternoon with new rubber. I was slow, and didn't feel productive, but
I got the tires scrubbed in. We finished up around 3 and went back to the motel to
get a hot shower, and got some dinner, etc. Another good night of sleep.
Sunday 10/9
We had an 8:50 practice session followed by a 9:15 qualifier. What I want to know is, who
the hell thinks it's a good idea to qualify for a gp race in Michigan in the middle of
October at 9:15am !? It was cold, but luckily the sun had decided to come out in
full force. I tried to make the morning practice as productive as possible, since I
hadn't felt like I had gotten in too many good laps. I qualified OK.. 5th out of 14
or so people. I was still way off the pace, but apparently so was everyone else.
We were up around 12:30, and it was a bit wamer. I got a great start and went into
T1 with the front row.. I was in 5th and got passed. On the 3rd (perhaps 2nd?)
lap, the rider who passed me made a mistake coming out of T1 (2nd gear left hander), so I
went inside him and got on the gas. T2 is a long late apex sweeper.. I got on the
gas hard to stay in front of him, but got on it too hard too soon and ran out of
racetrack. I went off into the grass pinned in 3rd gear. I shut it down and
got on the rear brake, but I was running out of runoff, so I had to get on the front
brake. This isn't what you would normally do in the dirt/grass, and the bike got all
out of control and pitched me off to the left. Crap. Second crash of the
weekend. I was worried, because all I really needed to do was get a decent finish
and I would have 3rd wrapped up for the season, and here I was lying face down in the
dirt. I picked up the bike, pulled out all the grass and dirt, whacked the clutch
lever back into place and got it started. *whew* I took off, and after a bit
of sliding from dirty wheels, I managed to get back to lap times I had been running.
Unfortunately, the crowd was long gone (and I got lapped) but I managed to hold it
together to finish 12th.
My finish was good enough for me to hold onto 3rd for the season, so I finally get a
national/expert championship podium finish!
Special Thanks to: John & Tammy for the bike, and of course them and John Crook for the great company.