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* Budd's Creek Report * |
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I like having the Budd's Creek race in conjunction with the 4th of July holiday, that means less vacation days needed! We left Spartanburg on the 4th and spent the evening on the waterfront at Solomon's Island enjoying the company of our good friends Eric and Emily, a fine dinner, and spectacular fireworks. On Friday, we drove up to Frederick to display the race bike at Harley-Davidson of Frederick for the pre-race "Kick Start Party". Shawn Vantucci and the staff showed us great hospitality and we met and spoke with hundreds of race fans. We really enjoyed ourselves! Saturday morning qualifying went fairly well with a conservative tune in the bike. With each successive pass, tuning changes were made and ET's came down to the index. I was feeling pretty confident about eliminations on Sunday and decided not to make a test and tune pass Sunday morning, a decision I would be really glad of later on. The first 2 rounds of eliminations were favorable for us. In the third round, it felt like the bike missed shifted to fifth gear. A little testing on the return road and everything seemed to be working. The bike hadn't missed a shift in quite a while, so I didn't think any more about it. I had to do a quick turn around in the pit as we were doing a back to back round. Aired up and gassed up, I started the bike, put it in gear and let the clutch out a LONG way before it started to move. Too late to do anything, I just hoped the clutch would hold together one more round and then I would have time to make adjustments/repairs. It was not to be, though. I launched OK, maybe slightly lazy, hit 2nd gear OK, then when I hit third, the bike went to the red line. I tried twice more to shift and once manually with my foot, but the bike would not accelerate any further and I was eliminated. I made it 4 rounds and into the semi-finals for the second race in a row, so I wasn't real upset about what I later discovered was indeed a burned up clutch. If I had made that test and tune run that morning the clutch would have only gotten me to the quarter finals. Going 4 rounds gave me the points I needed to move up 1 spot in the national rankings and 2 spots in the Eastern points, both to the #4 slot. Gotta go put that new clutch in.....See you at Bristol! And THANKS for visiting the MAVRIK Racing pages!
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