Pike's Peak / AMA
09/16 - 09/19/99

Event Final Tech Info

Race Times / Results:

Notes:

After almost two months off (three for Steve), we were back in action at Pike's Peak International Raceway in Fountain, Colorado. We used the time off to do a lot of development and maintenance work on the F4s - all of it having positive results. Check the Prep & Mod notes for details.

Steve and I had spent a lot of time training for the AMA season finale, doing motorcross, flat-track, mountain biking, weights, and some high-altitude acclimation to prepare for the 5200 ft elevation of PPIR. Ironically, though, Steve developed a respiratory / strep throat infection and was miserable by the time we left for the track. Of course, being cooped up in the motorhome for the trip, Dave and I contracted the same nasty stuff by the time we rolled in on Wednesday morning. Steve headed off for the hospital and got a script for some antibiotics. Dave and I visited the same doc later that night and got scripts too. I guess it's a good thing that we had trained hard for the race - we'd probably have packed up Thursday, feeling as miserable as we all were.

September is probably not the best time to race at PPIR. The weather changed from cold to hot to raining almost every day. The track shuts down when it rains, so we lost a lot of track time when the clouds opened up. The layout of PPIR is very straightforward - and very short at 1.3 miles. Most of the track's surface is pretty good. A couple of ripply cement / tar patches to watch out for, and a dip through T2 that at first glance doesn't look that bad, but when you hit it at speed coming off the front banking, cranked all the way over, it was enough to hammer the front end causing more than a few OMIGOD moments. The transitions on and off the banking were smooth. I wish Loudon and Vegas were that good.

Thursday's promoter practice was spent trying out some new things on the bikes and allowing Steve to get back into the swing of things after recovering from his broken heel at Loudon in June. The testing went well and we had the bikes fairly well sorted out for Friday. Losing track time due to a wet track was bad enough, but on Friday the AMA decided to reconfigure the entry into T1. To their credit, the entry to T1 was a wee bit fast on Thursday - pretty much WFO all the way off the banking and out onto the back section. Their mistake was to apparently ask for everybody's input in making the change. There must have been fifty riders, track workers and AMA officials up in T1 trying to figure out what to do. They'd make some changes, have a couple of Superbike riders check it out, change it some more, try it some more ............ after about three hours the configuration was set and we got to get back out on the track. It was a good change as it forced us to slow a bit, but the length of time to make the change was ridiculous!

Saturday started and ended well, but was a mess for me in the middle. Coming down into T1 during practice I hit a false neutral. By the time I realized what was wrong, I was running wide in T2 and off into the grass. I stood it up as I hit the grass, but there was a patch of mud waiting for me and the bike went down. As I slid on my butt down the track at about 80mph, I watched the bike slide on its side up the back banking, SLAM wheels first into the wall and bounce back down the track. It was my first crash of the year, and my first high-speed spill ever. My damage was limited to some new character scuffing on the backside of my leathers. The bike suffered a tweaked frame and a bent front brake rotor. To my amazement, the bodywork suffered almost no damage - IRP should change the name of their product to 'bodywork savers'.

Qualifying later that day went really well. Steve qualified 25th for the 750 Supersport and 33rd for the 600 Supersport races. I qualified 32nd and 35th respectively. The grid was the smallest of the year at only 36 allowed starters. I guess Steve was recovering well - he qualified one second faster than me and only three seconds off the fastest pole time. The strep infection started hitting me pretty hard by Saturday afternoon, so I opted out of the 750 race and cheered Steve on to his best AMA finish of 19th! He ran a damn fine race and we're really proud of his accomplishment.

I was feeling a lot better by the 600 race on Sunday morning. It was cold and windy as we started getting the bikes ready to race. As we were sitting along the hot pit wall before the race, the roaming track announcer came up and asked us for an interview. That was cool. It was broadcast over the track's PA system. It was the usual brothers racing against each other type stuff. The race went well. Steve beat me to T1 and took off. He ran to a 23rd finish, I was 28th.

We packed up early to beat a storm front heading down from the north, but we took time out to watch the Superbike race. Helluva race, best I've seen. Great dicing between Chandler, Picotte and Nicky Hayden, an awesome move by Chandler near the end of the race in T3 and a Harley on the box.

Next round, WSMC action at Willow Springs October 15 - 17, 1999.

Bob.

Copyright 1996 - 2003, Aramel Racing, All Rights Reserved