October 23, 2005 - F-USA, Daytona, FL
The F-USA races were very exciting - Chris was on pole for Sportbike and qualified second for Superbike.
The Superbike race was first and Chris was at a power disadvantage with his Supersport bike as the other riders had up to 650cc Superbikes.
The race was very exciting; it looked like Chris would not be able to win. After 11 laps of trying everything, leading, staying in second place, and trying 3rd place coming out of the banking, it looked like he wouldn't have the power to draft and win. On the last lap, Chris went for it and out broke the first place rider going into corner one and pulled a 20-bike-length lead before the banking and now has his first F-USA Superbike WIN.
In the Supersport race his bike would be competitive and it looked like this would be his race. The race went pretty much like the Superbike race, Chris was in the lead but positions were changing as quickly as the weather.
Chris was waiting for the last lap again and much to his disappointment, the other riders were aware of his strategy. On the second to last lap he went hard on the brakes to get from 3rd ,unfortunately, the first place rider went on the brakes hard and had to stand the bike up, as he did this, the second place rider had to do the same thing to avoid contact, Chris was in third place now and about to go around 2nd place, he stood the bike up also and the two of them made contact.
Chris had the option to try and make it around the second place rider and risk taking them both out, or riding off the track. He chose to ride off the track and stay safe. Unfortunately, he re-joined the race in 8th place and with only 2 laps to go he could only finish in 4th place. All in all, a very exciting race.
Interesting fact: Chris was racing at 1.44s all weekend and a best time of, 1.43.8. On race tires. With those lap times during AMA qualifying, Chris would have been second on the Grid next to Tommy Hayden who went on to win that race this Spring.
Chris improved his times from this Spring by over a second at Daytona. This past Spring was Chris' first time on his new bike and this shows how much he's improved.
All of last year Chris' times improved by a second or two at every AMA track. Next year should be very exciting with Diablo, if he keeps those improvements going he could podium everywhere.
Another interesting fact is: Sunday morning, there was a rain practice and up until Chris' practice, the best time on the track was 2.07. When Chris went out, his first lap was 1.59 and then a 1.57 and went as low as a 1.54. Fortunately, the F-USA people changed the schedule so we wouldn't have to race in the rain. (I can't imagine what the banking must feel like at 170 mph in the rain) Although a rain race would have suited Chris as he was at least 4 seconds a lap faster than anyone at the track.
The race weekend ended about 3pm, just in time. Hurricane Wilma was waiting off the West coast of Florida for the racing to end.
We packed up and Chris drove back to Calgary by himself, (2500 miles) as Willie and I raced to the Airport to catch any flight out of Florida, we weren't scheduled to leave till the next morning and all flights were cancelled for Monday and possibly Tuesday. We got out in time, with Airtransat to Toronto and then caught a flight back to Calgary with Westjet.
That's it for 2005 in North America. Chris is off to New Zealand to race with Shaun Harris and his team, Moto-Dynamix.