Monday, May 31, 2010

NEMM 2010

Sunday was the season opener for New England Mini Moto at the Graniteville Kart track. It's only an hour away, so I can sleep in and still get there with time to spare. Anyway, it was a good time as usual. Light turnout but the XR100 class is always pretty full.

This year there's a 45+ class, so I'm racing that as well as the XR100 class. I took the lead in the 45+ heat race from the start and won pretty easily. In the feature I had a slow start and had to file into 2nd place for a lap, but I was able to move up into first pretty quickly. I was able to gap the other riders until the last lap, going into the ramp turn I missed a shift and caught neutral right before the jump. I was able to recover and didn't lose my position, but it wasn't my finest performance.

Unfortunately the XR100 class didn't go well for me. I had an OK heat race, starting from the back I was able to finish well enough to get on the second row for the feature. I had a decent start in the feature and was holding down 4th after passing a guy on the first lap. But the guy I passed was Chris, riding a Chinese built Pitster minibike on steroids 'n crack (the bike, not Chris), and he was right on top of me and I knew I was holding him up, which is OK by me, it's why we race, but if I made any mistakes he'd blow right by me. Well, I screwed up the uphill left turn, I felt the front end going away and I couldn't recover it, so I low sided, and Chris had nowhere to go but over me. I felt bad at first, 'cause I saw him go over the bars, but then I felt worse 'cause his bike landed on top of me and he had to pick it up off of me as I lay sprawled under both of our bikes. We got ourselves collected and going again, but my rear brake lever was bent under the engine case, so I had no rear brake, so I pulled off.

So it goes, but I had a good time racing with good folks on a postcard day in Vermont!

The pit scene


The bold new look for 2010!


"The Devil is in the details"...








Here's the start of the Premier Class heat race. My batteries died, but you'll get the first lap in...

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