Witchkraft Racing: The Search for Speed

Home » General » Barber and Daytona a Big Success

Barber and Daytona a Big Success

Both weekends at Daytona and Barber went extremely well. Jeff, Rob, John and company survived Daytona! Not only did they survive, they managed an 18th place in race one and a 12th place in race two, after qualifying 26th on the grid. Big credit to the team, as rain slowed the first day down, where Jeff was forced to not only learn the track in one session, but also use that for qualifying since the AMA had to combine the schedule to make up for lost time. 32 bikes qualified for the AMA Supersport grid and a good number of guys (6-10 if I recall) didn't make the grid.

For not having any laps around Daytona and literally being thrown to the wolves, it was an awesome challenge that the boys stepped up to. It's easy to type it out here, but to really quantify the work put in to not only make it to Daytona, but get the results at an event that can be as chaotic and unpredictable as Daytona is - it truly is impressive. I'm looking forward to having us all together at full strength for our next event.

As for Barber, it went really well. While only a trackday, it was a good time both days. Warm weather, good friends and lots of riding. Joe, Matt and I drove down, meeting up with Brian and Max, Doug, Marion, Scott and Charlie from Pit Bull. We all worked together and the senior-citizen side of the team all rode (Joe, Doug and Eric I'm talking about of course :), which was great. It was good to see Doug back at it riding, late braking and throwing the bike around the technical Barber course. Eric was back up to speed on his new Triumph 675 and it was really nice to see my dad flogging the SV around the track and passing guys on 600's.

I gave my dad a hard time because coming into the weekend, he was planning on going in the novice or intermediate group since he hadn't ridden in awhile. I told him he was silly because he's a racer and should be in the advanced group. I understood his reasoning though and let off a little bit. He ended up going in the advanced group on his own though and in the first session, he was gone. Completely checked out. It took me all of the session to catch back up to him – on a 600! The man hadn't lost a step and with all the hip and knee work, was back to normal. It was absolutely great to see.

For me, the weekend was a success. I could ride! Thank the heavens, I don't have to cancel the entire season. :) The wrist was .. well, it was there. I was able to ride around it for the most part. I could brake and move around on the bike without too much issue. The only problem I had was being able to twist the throttle 100% in the left-handed corners. While off the bike, I couldn't use my arm to make up for the lack of movement in my wrist, so I was only turning the throttle at probably 60-70% before getting back up on the bike, where I could then get the throttle fully turned. I tried working on some different ways to regrab the throttle entering those corners, which was alright, but needs more work. In some of the sessions, my hand would go numb/fall asleep, but I think that was due to it being the first time out and being too tight on the bars. Basic rider error there. Hey, I was excited to be riding! It was sooooo nice. The first time dragging a knee while squirming out of a corner .. well, some stuff you can't fully put into words.

Brian and I had a good time running around and finding time. Saturday ended with some slow times, but with his help I was able to find about five seconds on Sunday which was a somewhat decent pace for my first time there. It wasn't nearly good enough to do anything special at any races, but given the technical nature of Barber, I felt it was a good start. Overall Barber is a great track. We tried going there when it first opened Easter weekend back in 2003, but there were issues with the town not wanting a race weekend on Easter, so they cancelled the event. We ended up going to another track instead and were never able to get back to Barber until now. The facilities are incredible and the track itself is just top-notch. Flowing, lots of elevation, blind corners – it has a bit of everything. It's a very technical track that's a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to going back there.

We did learn a few things there. I ran Pirelli's the first day and Dunlops the second day. The tires didn't make the difference in the time drop, but I think we know what compounds to run there when we go back, and found that we didn't need to make a lot of changes to make the Dunlops comfortable, coming from the Pirellis. What did help the times drop were watching Barber videos before and during the weekend from previous races, along with walking the track Saturday night. That always seems to help me and it did on Sunday. I wish we could have had one more day there, as with Doug scouting in the last session - we found a key change after the last session on Sunday that would have cured the issue I was having with the bike running wide out of corners. There are about 4-5 more seconds that need to be found, so we certainly have our work cut out for us.

A big thanks to Brian and Eric for helping make the weekend possible. Also a big thank you to Joe and Matt. Matt specifically, as he pretty much ran the show while dad and I were riding. Checking tire pressures, fuel, general bike stuff, all while snapping photos and posting facebook updates throughout the weekend. He's really dedicated to helping the team this year and with the strong team we've put together, he will be a big help in accomplishing the goals we're laying out. Thanks Bro.

Cheers,

eddie

BTW – there are some Flickr photos from the weekend posted over on the right in the Flickr section.

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011 | POSTED AT: 5:46 AM
FILED UNDER: General