I knew coming into the day it was going to be a tough one. My band had a show Friday night and I had to leave at 2am for Summit after the show. My good friend and drummer, Jeremy, was nice enough to drive down with me so I could try and sleep. Managed to get about 30min of shut eye before arriving at Summit Point around 5am.
Went through the normal daily routine; registration, bike prep, tech, practice. First practice did not go well, bike was all out of shape. Partly because I was trying the 165 on a 4.5″ rim instead of a 5″ which I had been using. Also the forks were refreshed and revalved by Zoran to have some more rebound. After making some suspension adjustments and putting on the 5″ rim bike felt good again. Second practice went standard.
The First race of the day was the GT Lights race which is a 25 minute race. I have yet to do a full GT Lights race this year and was worried with the amount of sleep I got how it would go. Got a good jump off the start but as always Brian and Tommy Beat me into turn 1 and as always a horrible first lap. After this my pace picked up. Started to close back in on brian just a bit as he was getting stuck in expert traffic. Few more laps go by and I find myself closing in on some of the TOBC expert riders. This was definitely a confidence booster. In a couple laps I was able to pass CJ(TOBC), Todd, and Darrell(TOBC). Up until this point, at no point did I get the feeling that I was running good times. After passing them, I knew times had to be decent altho Brian and Tommy long gone. And then it happens, I run out of steam. Tristan (TOBC) gets passed me, along with CJ and Darrell. I was just hopeing for the white flag to come out and took seem to take forever. I managed to get a 4th. Todd informed me that we were running 1:23 lap times, which would be my best of the year. I was a bit happier about the race. A bit later I found out that I had actually dipped into the 1:22’s which is my best ever. Now I was feeling good about the Thunderbike race.
Start of the thunderbike race was good. Almost got the hole shot by Tommy managed to chop my front end off going into turn 1, which I was expecting, no biggy. My energy was pretty much spent after 2 laps. I get passed twice and had no steam to safely push back in front of them. Again, another 4th.
The lightweight GP race seemed out of reach so it was decided to skip that one and head home. Very happy about getting into the 22’s, not so happy about the two 4th place finishes. I do however go into NJMP with the points lead in Thunderbike.
Thunderbike – 4th
GT Lights – 4th