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Putnam Recap

The weather in Mt. Meridian, Indiana was great both Saturday and Sunday. Lots of laps were put in and significant changes to the bike made for a fun and eventful weekend. Monte and Bonnie put on another stellar event, with most everyone riding with a level head as there were only three off-track excursions the entire weekend. Garry, Dave and David (Babel) made for a great group of guys to hang out with during the weekend and we had a all-out good time.

Garry was extremely helpful – from suspension, to diagnosing a bad spark plug, to helping change tires, to giving me advice on riding. I can tell he loves racing and he went above and beyond what I was hoping to get out of the weekend. I was extremely appreciative of all his efforts. If he's able to make some of the race weekends and work together with my dad and Doug - we're going to have a phenomenal team. That alone gets me excited for the season to start.

Throughout both days of riding, Garry made a series of changes to both the front and back of the bike that got it handling better, and myself more comfortable on the bike itself. Dave (Grey) took the bike out for a session on Sunday and loved the bike, while also confirming a couple things I was feeling on the bike as well. As Garry and I talked, we thought it would be a good idea to get a stiffer spring in the back. With the stiffer spring we can get our sag numbers in the ballpark without having to add a lot of preload into the shock to get to those numbers – thus letting the shock in theory work better without cranking and putting all that pressure onto a softer spring. I'm also hoping this will help the bike stand up in the back and finish the corner a little better, as this was a small issue I was noticing.

Personally, I've got some more work to do in terms of riding. I was thinking too much about lap times. I wanted to jump right in and turn the lap timer on, when in reality, I should have kept it completely off for the first day and focused on the basics of riding instead. It can be easy to get into old bad habits – especially when shaking off the winter rust and adapting to a new bike. I need to make sure I'm doing everything right on the bike before going and pushing for harder laps. All that ends up happening is that I become less consistent, put too much input into the bike, get tired faster and don't make the most out of the bike. It's no surprise that some of the fastest laps come when you're just being smooth and rolling along – not pushing at 100%. I know it had been awhile since I had been to Putnam, but I only went 0.7 faster on the R6 than I did the SV, so I clearly left a lot of time out on the table.

Typically last year in a morning practice I could put the hammer down early and be comfortable getting on the pace, but with the new bike thus far, I don't think I would be hurting myself working on the basics in the first few sessions of a trackday, where I can more comfortably push harder later in the day. Either way, these are just a couple of the little things I'm picking up that makes pre-season riding such an integral part of the season. Rather than realizing these things in the first rounds of the actual season, I'm sorting it out now and can ideally correct it by the time the season starts.

Next on the list is Grattan in a couple weeks with Apex 2 Apex. Hopefully some good weather will make for a productive couple of days. Grattan is a much more familiar track than Jennings and Putnam have been, so I'm really looking forward to it.

Cheers ..

- eddie

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 | POSTED AT: 6:52 AM
FILED UNDER: General