As always, Mike Morgan took time out of his schedule to update us on his recent racing exploits at Road America. Due to the fact that Racer Digest does not want to infringe on any copyright laws, check out his photos on www.meccaofspeed.com. Keep up the good work Mike.
Road America June 2-3
Finishing position 29th out of 42.
Road America has not been nice to me the last couple of years. Crashes, broken bikes and bodies have been the norm for me there. So I went about this race weekend a little differently. We arrived on Tuesday to take part in a track day before the AMA weekend. It was nice to get some time on the bike and ramp up to the weekend a little slower. With 2 full days of riding before racing, getting around the track was easier. That was really nice, you just get so comfortable on the bike and what it’s going to do. And the lap times showed it.
I was 2 people away from being in the faster group for qualifying on Friday. The AMA splits the field into 2 groups. The first 50% are in the fast group and the other 50% are in a slower group. They base this on lap times. If I would have done the same time I did in the race or for qualifying I would have been in the faster group! But I don’t really push to hard during practice on Friday morning. So it was exciting to be that close without trying to hard. Plus I end up being near the top of the other group and get talked about during qualifying.
The weekend’s weather did not coroperate very well. It was raining on and off. So that makes for more stress when you don’t have an endless supply of rims, tires, and money. But as usual the guys at Dunlop really came trough! Those guys have such a hard job and not much thanks. But, are one of the single biggest factors in racing. Another factor for me is pit crew. Trying to do everything by yourself at a race is hard. So I have got to give a special thanks to the guys from Smartdot! As seen in the pictures. Everyone did a great job and helped out a lot.
After qualifying 29th and being as high as 24th during qualifying I was happy with the weekend. The race went well. I did make a few mistakes that allowed a group of 4 guys to get far enough away that I could not get back in the draft. And 3 of the guys I out qualified. But RA is such a high speed track that if you get out of the draft it is hard to keep up. I was catching the group but ran out of laps. I did turn a faster lap time than everyone in that group. And for this track that I have struggled so much at I’m happy with my performance. I lowered my lap time by 4 seconds! And was consistently going faster by 2-3 seconds than I did last year.
We have a long break since we are not doing any west coast rounds. So I’ll try to get in a few track days before mid-ohio.
Thanks to everyone! Mike Morgan RIM Racing & Engineering
