When you get a spot in the Roadracing World Wild Card KTM 390 Cup you get a race ready KTM 390, two sets of Dunlop spec tires, Sunoco spec race fuel and crash damage, all free. You take care of the rest including a pit set up and a mechanic. As you saw in an earlier post, the part about the mechanic was lost in translation. I got a call a week before this race. Any Crew Chief gig is hard work both mentally and physically. It only gets harder when there is a language barrier, the rider is young and has never seen the track or ridden the bike.
I rearranged my schedule, loaded my rig and drove to Utah Motorsports Campus for this MotoAmerica race weekend. I picked up the bike from KTM on Thursday afternoon, checked it over and gave it my Stage One Lindemann Engineering KTM 390 set up. I met my rider that evening.
On Friday in P1 we were 5th fastest, 2.15.428. A very good start but the clutch died doing a practice start on the cool down lap. After some checking KTM gave me a new bike and I moved the tires and other changes over.
Friday afternoon in Q1 the clutch started to die after 3 laps but I sent him back out because there was nothing else to do. He went a second faster than P1 and held onto 5th , 2.14.574. After some checking KTM gave me a new engine. A late night ensued.
On Saturday, I was up early to check the nights work. Sadly we crashed on the out lap but because I know how things work we got the bike out of impound, checked it over and sent him out to make sure it was not bent and so he could ride again before the race. I imposed a no crashing rule, just take it easy and check the bike out. Our time from Q1 was good for 10th, row 4 but with the long straight and the draft that might be better than the front row. You like how I spun that? When it came time to fix the damage my rider was handed a bucket of water and a brush, life lesson.
Race One: Weak launch, 8th at the end of lap 2, a 2.13.463, his best of the race and 7th at the end of lap 3, then 6th for two laps, then 5th on lap 6, then leading the 2nd group till the finish in 4th. Nice.
The clutch problems and some conflicting set up advice slowed the set up progress but now it was time for LE Stage Two.
In the warm up on Sunday we were second fastest with his best lap yet on the same tires since Q1, 2.13.994. New tires, a click to make two bumps smaller and wipe it down.
Race Two: Two Sighting laps to scuff the tires and check the bumps/clicker change. Someone dropped out of the race moving us up to 9th, row 3 inside. Start, this kids needs to go to a drag strip but he made some moves on the rest of the lap and crossed the line in 9th. This race was more spread out than yesterdays. We climbed the ladder while only two leaders broke away. Lap 6 was his best when we moved into 4th with a 2.12.480. You can’t see the track from the pit wall so someone will have to tell me about the last lap pass that put us on the box because he had a nice lead when he came into view in the last turn. I stopped him on pit road, told him: Third. Good job. Enjoy this. Go to the Podium. And we did.