Friday I headed back down to Summit Point for another WERA race weekend. It was almost a month ago that I crashed in T5 at Summit, so I wasn't sure what to expect for this race weekend. What I did expect was the weather to be sunny and clear all weekend like the weather report predicted. That was hardly the case. Along with me and CJ, bill and his brother came down to watch and participate in the action. Friday night we arrived, set up the pits and went to bed in anticipation for the races to come. It was a National race/ 4 hour endurance weekend, so there were a lot of people and big teams there.

Saturday morning I headed out in first practice. took the first couple of laps slow cause the track was still wet from the heavy fog the night before. slowly but surely I came up to speed. surprisingly had no problems with T5. thought it might psyche me out, but never happened. actually i was feeling real comfortable with the track, taking turns faster than norm and getting my knee down more than ever before. ended up having 3 practice sessions that morning. bill and mike were filming and taking lap times for me. turns out I dropped my fastest time by a second (1:31 something). friend and fellow 400 rider - who blows me away at Nelson's - asked if he could follow me for a good line. after the race he said he lost me at T3. so things went well for me saturday. had to buy new knee sliders and replace the broken spring on my exhaust pipe (scraped it off in turn 10 probably). watched the endurance race the rest of the day. just can't imagine racing for 4 hours!

wake up sunday morning to heavy clouds. check dave's awesome weather clock and it says rain. that thing is never wrong, and damn I left my rain wheels at home. I get out for the first practice on slicks. things were ok. still running hard. go out for second practice and it starts to rain. I'm still on slicks and doing well. not running hard, but not falling either. each time I go around i see more and more people lying in the the corners. T3 starts to get a little slick. luckily make it to the end without incident. It starts to rain hard. they call off the practice sessions at session 5. hey want to give everyone a chance to gear up for rain and get out for another practice session. finally I make the decision to buy rains for my current wheels. I'll just sell my ones at home since I'm picking up 2 more sets of wheels later this week. drop the wheels off with JBtrieguy and go to the riders meeting. blah blah it's raining be careful. wait and wait for my wheels. don't get them back till 3rd call of my practice group, so I'm already missing practice on my rains. get back to my pit and start putting the wheels back together. Had to borrow a front-end stand again (the rule is borrow twice buy one the 3rd time - it's in the mail as I write). lightening is spotted over the track. the practice session is red flagged. that gives me more time. practice starts again and I'm still fighting with my wheels. after lots of cussing and pushing, we get the wheels back on and I head out in the pouring rain for 2 laps. not bad. track is wet and it's raining. what are you going to do?

all the practice sessions get to go, but it starts to rain hard. after a half hour of heavy rain it lets up a little and they make 1st call for my race. go out for the warm up lap. the track is bad. T3 is worse than ice. there are streams across T2, T8, and T9. After T5 and T8 there are lakes leaving 2' of open track. grid up for the start and we're off. head into T1 in 3rd place. head up to T3 and the leader totally loses it in T3. he's just rolling across the gravel pit. I make it through ok. after a couple of laps, I get passed by 2 riders, so now I'm in fourth. I catch up to the 3rd place guy pretty quickly. he trashes me down the straights, but practically parks it in the turns. I battle with him like this for 2 or 3 laps. finally on the last lap we both come up behind a guy at T1. he follows the guy, while I out brake them both and take the inside line. He never makes it back to me and I finish with a 3rd place trophy in the pouring rain.

after a race or two the rain lets up and eventually quits. team mate dave heads out for his 125 GP race. he does well and finishes in 6th. one more place and he would have one $100.

finally it's our Formula 2 race (dave and I race together in this one). hasn't been raining for a couple of hours, but the track is still wet. go out for warm up lap. lakes have receded and the most of the streams are gone. we grid up and take off. the same guy who wrecked first lap of my first race in T3 wrecks again in the same place. ok, so T3 is still very bad. I start battling with an SV-650 on the back side of the track and get him out of T9 on lap 2. whenever I pass an SV (more torque they're faster on the straights) I always assume they'll pass me back on the front straight, so I try to go fast into T1 so they don't pass me back. bad idea for me on a wet track. I hit the brakes hard at brake marker 2 and the bike slips from underneath me. i'm sliding fast down the track. out of the corner of my eye I see dave (my team mate) sliding too. damn! we both crash out. My crash caused him to brake too hard and he crashed just the same as I. finally get hauled back to the pits. my bike isn't that bad. my frame slider protected a lot, but my windscreen is trashed. my pipe also took a beating, but I can fix that.

so that was it for the F2 race and the weekend. we loaded the bikes up - now looking like wicked dirt bikes with their rain tires and parts covered with mud and Summit Point crud - and headed home.

spend some more time in the garage and head out to the races at Virginia International raceway in two weeks.