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AFM / AMA Infineon / Calgary Regional


Hello,

This is a little late but it's more of a journal for my memories ( I'm getting older )

Chris's races at the Infineon round of the AFM the weekend before the AMA

I arrived the thursday night at LAX and drove the motorhome and trailer to San Francisco to pick-up Chris at the airport on friday afternoon. Chris had to wait about 2 hours because my phone wasn't ringing and he sat at the airport till it finally rang.

We drove to Infineon (aka Sears Point) and got all set for the friday practice and had , not so good weather.
Infineon is a strange place, even though it's not raining there's still water on the track because of these mini geysers all around the track. The track is in a valley and the water will push it's way up through the sides of the track and run along the track for a while. Not only does water come up but it makes a mess of the track with all the dirt.

The track itself is not as smooth as you would expect with a AMA track. It's bumpy and lots of pavement changes and guite a few cracks. The lay out is great, elevation changes everywhere and very twisty , a few to many concrete walls for most riders to really give it their best effort.

Chris was scheduled for 3 races this weekend.
Formula 1 ......... which is all 1000's and 750's and 600's

For the race Chris was grided about 30th position. The race was very exciting with all the big bikes. The weather was cloudy but warm, Chris moved up to about 10th place by the first lap and kept making progress through out the race to finish in 2 nd place by the end, he was beaten by a 1000 Ducati. He was the first Honda and the first 600 to cross the line as a matter of fact, there wasn't any 600's near him.

The next race was what they call Formula Pacific it's kind of like a formula extreme class, basically anything goes.
Chris, was grided in about 40th position, he had a harder time this time, with the faster bikes and his grid position , he rode well and finished in 6th place. Once again he was the first Honda 600 to cross the line and no 600's near him.

The next race was the 600 superbike race, this would have been his race, as no 600's could keep up to his times of 1: 39, these are some of the fastest time recorded at Infineon for AMF club racing.
Unfortunately, the race was canceled due to rain .. To Bad .....
All in all, a great race weekend.
Because we were in San Fran till the AMA, Chris took a Race school with Reg Pridmore and had a lot of fun and learnt some more different riding techniques. This school was mostly for street riders.

The thursday before the AMA round was a track day, but Chris's Erion bike wouldn't be ready till friday, so he took out his F4i and got some more practice. After practice their was a drag racing competition, we had already put our bikes away and Chris heard the event over the loud speaker and said," that sounds like fun" so we took the bikes out. Off he went Dragracing, he said," I can beat all those Harley's" The first bike he goes up against is a full blown drag race Harley with everything, 1300 cc's, nitrous, wheely bar, you name it it had it. Fortunately, this was only practice. To put it mildly, he got his ass kicked, by the Harley (that hurt) .
He beat all the other race and street bikes during competition but there's a whole different way of scoring and it's not, who crosses the finish line first, but response time and when you had your last coffee (I still don't know how it works.)
Anyway, Chris improved his response time from .009 to .005.3 the best anyone can do apparently is .004 This should help him during his AMA race, If Chris, has an obvious weakness it would be his starts. All in all, it was a lot of fun and he has a new respect for Drag racing.

The AMA round would be the exciting race as Chris was on Roger Lee Haydon's Honda 600 rr, with the Erion Racing Team.
Friday was cloudy and some sun, I should mention, there is no racing at Infideon if it's raining or if the mini geysers are around.
The only bright spot was that we were joined by Nick Ienatsch, Chris's coach and mentor.
The Erion bike was set-up stock, because they had no idea how Chris liked to have his bike set up. His first time out, the bike wasn't steering well, but had fantastic breaks and more power than the F4i. The next time out they started raising the back end and dropping the front to give him better steering. The session was called due to rain half way, not much time to test the new settings.
He got enough time to let the tuner know he was on the right track and to keep going that way.
The Erion tuner, Goeff Cesmat, was only doing a little at a time so as not make any radical changes.
The rain came and the rest of practices were canceled for the day.
Friday he only spent about 35 minutes on the new bike. To Bad ......

Saturday, it didn't look to bad, no rain, but all those geysers were flowing and in the end there was no practice at all on saturday.

Sunday Race day .
No rain! Chris had a few practices before the race and got the bike set-up a little better than friday, but was still not happy with the steering. Also he woke up with a very sore shoulder, and was in serious pain, Motorhome beds are not that good. (also maybe a little tumble helped from the week before)
Anyway, the excuses never end. Dad's are allowed to do that.
The race qualifying was canceled because they had to do the whole AMA weekend in one day.
That meant Chris would qualify by points, Chris is now 15th overall and the top 600 privateer.
He takes his grid position and has the best launch of his life, he goes from 15th to about 9th or 10th
unbelievable, ( drag racing paid off ) he's racing the new Honda 600 rr after only about 1 hour practice time.
For the first few laps he's in about 12 place, ahead of team mate Alex Gobert, Suzuki factory rider Jamie Stouffer, and Canadian champion Steve Crevier, it looked pretty impressive.
As the laps went on Chris started to slow down a bit and eventually fell back to finish the race in 14th place, his shoulder was in severe pain by now and it took the everything to just finish the race without pulling off.
To put 14th place in perspective, there's 17 factory riders, paid professional, with all the perks.
Chris, is still worried about his chemistry homework.
Most people at the track understand that if you come in 18th as a privateer you've won the race.
So, Chris did Fantastic with only 1 hour on a new bike at a new track.
Kevion Erion was very happy with Chris and told me he understood that Chris would have probably finished better if he was on his own bike and wasn't worried about crashing Roger's bike.
Also, I told Chris it's better to finish 20th and not crash than it is to be running 8th and crashing.
It was understood if Chris was to crash, he better be leading the race.
Everyone at Erion was great and many thanks to Nick again, hopefully Chris will get another opportunity to do some more testing.
Chris's is tied for 13th overall in the AMA, not bad, for a 17 year old and top 600 privateer.

On a quick note, because this update is so late we had a Calgary reginal this weekend and Chris did unbelievable.
His results were.
Heavyweight ...... 1st place
600 pro ................2nd place
Super bike .............1st place
600 super bike .......1 St. place

So you don't think that nobody any showed up the Canadian 600 champion was there Clint McBain and the local Alberta Super bike Champion was there Pete Holzinger was there also.
Chris was on his 600 when he beat the boys in heavyweight and Super bike.

Were missing the AMA rounds at Georgia ( Road Atlanta) and Wisconsin (Road America).
That's it for now.

Fernando

calgary racecity