Mid-Ohio
In attendance was Ari, myself and Chris. The team is getting smaller but not less efficient.
We drove from Montreal after visiting my other brother, Julio and his family.
The drive was less exciting than the others and it was only 12 hours. The border crossing was easy and we arrived at Mid-Ohio a day early, to have one of our engines swapped and ready for the weeks festivities. Danny, from Erion Racing was kind enough to arrive one day early to change the engine. The Erion staff is always so helpful, it's great to have someone to ask questions.
The day before the AMA event on thursday there was a WERA race day. The track was bumpy and had strips of concrete to make the riding very slippery during the cross-overs from asphalt to concrete. Chris had one practice and then 3 races. This sounds a little crazy, but Chris loved the racing, it's more fun to race than practice. The first race was a 600 race and Chris was on the last row about 45th place, they don't qualify, you go by when you register, he registered the morning of the race, obviously he was the last to register. he had a great launch and was in 20th place by the first lap, by lap 3 he was in tenth by the last lap, lap 7 he finished in 6th place. The superbike went about the same as did Formula Extreme. At first it sounded like a crazy thing to do, but according to Chris, he liked it a lot more than just practicing.
The AMA event started on friday
Chris seems to be settling into that top 15 practice and qualify times, as he got faster so did the balance of the riders. I guess that's to be expected with all those factory/support riders.
Things went great all weekend, Ari did all the work and Chris didn't fall.
I made coffee with Bailey's, that's our new breakfast drink, we call it friendly coffee.
Kevin Graham and Robbie Baird from Honda Canada came out for the races and they stopped by.
We did a little test with pipes this weekend and found that, for our, 600 Honda rr, the best pipe was the Hindle pipe. The horsepower stayed the same at the top and we got an extra 4 horsepower at 10,000 rpm's. We were very happy with those results because some people said, we could get more power from a much more expensive pipe. Not True, for us.
Chris, qualified for 750 in 24th spot and rode his butt off to finish in 13th spot. Not bad for a 600 Honda against 750's, as a matter of fact, he was the first Honda to cross the line and the second 600 to cross the line. It was a great ride, smooth and the weather held up.
Chris normally would pray for rain, but with just having a bad rain race in Mosport and the fact that the track has such poor rain conditions, he said that Mid Ohio is the only track, so far, he wouldn't want to rain race.
The 600 race on sunday was a also a great race for Chris, he qualified on the 4th row, in front of two factory/support team riders, Annadale and No limits.
Next to Chris was Jamie Stauffer (Suzuki factory), Tony Meiring (Kawazaki factory), Martin Craggill, ( Bruce transport/ Honda USA) Not a bad line up.
Chris beat 50% of the 4th row. Not bad for a young fella.
During the race he was riding with the Annadale rider Rankin, Chris would catch him in all the corners, but just didn't have the horsepower to stay ahead in the straights. After a few attempts, Chris settled for 13th, as he felt it would be to dangerous to pass, and as Rankin isn't in the points, Chris felt it wasn't worth the risk. Chris also rode with a very sore knee from his Mosport fall.
He finished the race and now is very solid in 15 place and can catch 14 th place as Chandler is no longer racing 600.
That's it for now, were in the next Calgary race and then off to Mount Tremblant for another Canadian National, Hopefully we'll do better at this Canadian round.