July 16, 2007
I arrived wednesday night ready to practice on thursday, but without a crew to help all weekend- it was very difficult to stay focused and on top of my game.
Thursday saw my times drop significantly as the day wore on and we made changes to the bike and I was ready to begin qualifying friday very confident with the setup I had.
Friday came and went out in 600 qualifying and pulled out a 1.28.2 which was good for 19th position.
When we did the qualifying for superbike I forgot to put more fuel in the tank (Mosport if great for drinking lots of fuel!) so I did about 5 hot laps and came in to check my spot when my fuel light came on. Rules state that you cannot add fuel during qualifying. Well I had just put on a fresh set of tires and was feeling very confident. I went out and did one hot lap of 1.27.5 which was good for 20th position in the massive superbike grid. I matched my time from last year on my GSXR1000 with 50hp less! I was ecstatic! I even beat a handful of of 1000s.
On saturday we raced round 4 of the series. In the 600 race i got an amazing start but it started to rain after lap 4 or 5 so they red-flagged the race and made us switch to rain tires. I crashed out on the "wet-practice" in turn 8 doing some damage to my ZX-6R. I was out of the 600 race and out of the superbike race for that day.
I spent all night repairing the bike. Many thanks to Rob Cloutier who loaned me some parts to get going again!!
I shook the bike down in the AM and raced to 18th place in the 600 with a damaged motorcycle and a bruised leg from the day before.
The bike in stock form is definately on par with some average 600 motors running race fuel. The barrier right now is definately the motor as I think an extra 10-15 HP would definately make the bike on par with alot of the factory and rich privateer bikes. I guess we will see what this winter has to offer in terms of motor.
Many thanks to The Ottawa Goodtime Centre, Kanata Collision and Brett Birnie for their help on and off the track.