VIR August 18 - 19, 2001

Got to the shop in Dover, De Friday morning about 9am. My bike still wasn't fixed and the SV was wrecked from Kcraget at Summit Point the beginning of the month. Steve said if I could get it together, I could race it that weekend.  I worked all day and we finally left the shop around 7 pm that night. We rolled into Kcraget's in Danville, Va around 1 am. Got up Saturday morning and got to the track by 7:30 am.

A picture of our typical pit area. Dave was still trying to sell his second TZ.

Here I am headed out pit-out for the warmup lap.

This is me going through turn three on the warmup lap.

So this was an interesting race. I had won my previous race that day and was pretty excited about this one. You'll notice looking at this picture, I'm one novice in a field of experts. The guy behind me with the red and checkerd helmet is also a novice. I was leading our race, but had a pursuer.

Here I've passed a few of the experts and appear to have put a gap on the other novice, but I've run into a problem. John Hovey #82 (the mechanic at Speedwerks) borrowed Brian Roach's FZR400 RR monster. Brian won two regional championships (quite easily) on this bike. It was super fast and super light. John hadn't raced all season, so he was out sort of joyriding.

Experts and novices don't compete for the same points, trophies or finishes, but they can compete for the same line on the track. John didn't know it was me behind him, otherwise he would have let me by. He thought I was another expert trying to race him. I was getting frustrated and frantic. I couldn't get around him. I knew the other novice was catching up to us. The more John and I battled, the slower we went. Finally in a desperate move to pass him on the outside of turn one, I bumped John and nearly ran off the track. It was a bone-head move. I should never have been that desperate or got that close to him.

At that point John realized it was me, but it was too late. The other novice got around us both and I could not catch him in the lap we had left. I finished in second place and had to make a lot of apologies for my erratic behavior on the track.

Here's John looking back at me on the cooldown lap as I try to apologize for my behavior.

Here's Steve Long from Speedwerks working his magic through turn three.

Dave and I had been getting a couple of trophies and plaques at the races, but we kept forgetting to get pictures, so Dave posed with his trophy and the fist.