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Race shop, Kent City, MI (October 15, 2006)
Season ends...
Sunday, October 15, 2006 - by Kevyn Ashbay (crew)
With yesterdays canceling of the Toys For Tots benefit race, I didn't have a chance to write one last entry for the season. In the grand scheme of things, this was the most productive race season we have ever had. Looking over some of the results I found only one first round loss. This apposed to NINE last year. But you also have to figure in that we attended 25% less events. On the other side of it, this season has had far more adversity than any other I have been a part of. Countless tires failing, generators, water heaters cubs all breaking, it all made for quite a stressful and "fund-diminishing" year. I think that's a large part of why we are planning to sit out the 2007 Route 66 points series. (For the most part) All these years of non-stop racing can strain anyone so every now and then you need a break.
I'd also like to thank everyone who helped us this year. Some that come to mind are Bud's Towing for bringing us home at 3 AM Saturday night all the way from the border. Also, the local Polaris dealer for getting us our stock clutch a few hours before race #1 and allowing us to go all the way to the finals. Without it, we would have been well behind by race #2. And to everyone else who helped us, big and small, get through this tough year. We couldn't have done it without all of you!
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O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis, Indianapolis IL (September 14 - 17, 2006)
North Central Division 3 Finals....
Thursday September 14, 2006 - by Kevyn Ashbay (crew)
Last night we had
our usual stop to Grandma's Home cooking on the way down. We stayed the night in
a Wal-Mart 
parking lot in
Brownsburg (which is right next to the track). Yes, I know it sounds extremely
white-trashy, but who's judging. Today is basically a set up day. We got through
the gates at about 12:30. We were actually the very first ones in the East
gates. Greg Darm was with us when we entered so we staked out space for all six
of the bikes. This years team is made up of Donnie Banaski, Tom Ewig, Tom Florey,
Paul Water, Greg Darm and ourselves. I think this years team is much improved
from last year. Last years race of champions entrant was Billy Turner. He did
not race at all this year because he is battling cancer. So I know at least our
performance is somewhat dedicated to him hoping he gets better and can come back
to the track soon. Everything is set up and we are just awaiting tomorrow
morning when we can get our first time trial run. Before we went to bed we set
up B-n-S Theater and watched "Fun with Dick and Jane". 3 our 4 stars.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Our first time
trial out of the box was a touch slow. But then again, it always is. It did not
come in the morning because there are so many cars here, so I really didn't need
to be up at 8:00. That just made for everything to be checked, and
recheck beforehand. Later
in the day will be the Summit Shootout. For $20, we can dial like a race and the
top 8 riders will run a bracket for some extra money. I'm not sure if you will
enter, but it would be some great additional information from the track, and
some extra loot.
Turns out we did enter and thought we were not going to make it into the field because we ran pretty far off the dial we entered. But, as Shelly was making dinner and I was putting things away, they called out name to be up to the lanes. To make a long story short, Bob made it all the way into the finals where he got out run. On top of the extra money we won, we got 3 extra passes at the track in darkness conditions which will help come Sunday in the finals.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Since we didn't get to bed until late because of the Shootout, it was nice to sleep in until 9:00. Our third time trial was again mid afternoon putting first round of eliminations well into the evening. The bike tends to run similar to another bike on the team so we took our time getting up to the line for 1st round to see what he would run. While waiting, we saw the other five members of our team kind of fall apart. 4 of the 5 lost with Donnie blowing out the side of his brand new engine. That put the track down for over an hour while they got all the oil up. Seeing that kind of dampened the spirits of us but we had to block it out. Bob must have because he took the win going away with a 9.74 on a 9.72. Part of it was some help from the other lane with a .104 reaction. This was the start of worrying about out bike not getting off the line very well. It kept me up quite a bit of the night, even though worrying about it didn't help much. I thought it would. Tonight was another late night because of Donnie's oildown, not to mention bikes are always last to run.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Waking up, I was
already kind of disappointed because I knew we had to leave by the end of the
day. After going through all those rounds on Friday and making it into
eliminations today, I was already proud and thought we had accomplished
everything I was looking for coming down here. I was not prepared to go all the
way to the quarterfinals. To put it into perspective for myself, we were in the
top 7 of the entire NHRA division 3. There are hundreds and hundreds of bikes
and we made it this far. I believe we could have made it even farther if the
bike would have cooperated and left the line like it was supposed to but every
racer knows that things don't go as planned. Going four rounds with what I will
get in trouble for calling a wounded bike is more than an accomplishment. Its a
feat all in itself. It says a whole lot about the rider. Knowing that even if
the bike doesn't run as planned we have someone to back us up. And that if the
rider has a fault, the bike seems to pick up the slack. These last few races
leading up to the Finals have been great. Going rounds every race, consistently,
makes racing even better. Not many people can say that they live out there
dream, so I know I'm lucky that I get to. Every weekend.
_______________________________________
Mid Michigan Motorplex, Stanton MI (September 2, 2006)
Not quite what we had in mind...
Saturday, September 2, 2006 - by Kevyn Ashbay (crew)
The main reason we came here today is to get in a few rounds of night racing. At Indy, round 2 (at least) will be under the lights and we wanted some information going into it. It's probably a good thing we did do some testing, because as it turns out Bob's reaction time shot WAY up. Going from a safe .022 to a -.016 is fine here, but in 2 weeks it won't make us very happy.
Things came out of the box pretty good. Our settings from 2 weeks ago were to quick off the start and both time trials turn out to be red. The bike ran 3 exact times of 1.358 60ft times, which is the quickest it has ever run. I personally don't believe that it was that quick, but that's what the time slips say. As for the race itself, there were twice as many Super Pro cars this weekend compared to two weeks ago. We got a gift first round when a car went red for us. Round 2 and 3 were about as good as it gets. Round 2 we ran dead on with a 0 and Round three we ran dead on with a 6. Its hard to be beaten when you run like that. But apparently if your light is red, you it doesn't matter how close to the dial you are. You lose!
_______________________________________
Mid Michigan Motorplex, Stanton MI (August 20, 2006)
Lots of rounds, No $$$
Sunday, August 20, 2006 - by Kevyn Ashbay (crew)
We are staying around the area today, The initial plan was to go to US131 Motorsports Park yesterday but the weather forecast was bad and besides that IHRA doesn't let the bikes run a delay box and to top it off its US131... enough said. Coming here we have to run with the cars because they don't have a specific bike class. Being in Super Pro has its advantages, none of the cars know where to judge you from, we 60 quicker than all of them (even the fast ones!).
The major thing we were going for today was to try and push the envelope all the ways we never can in the points races in Chicago. The main thing I was interested in was the delay box. We kept taking time out and more time out and Bob was nailing the tree every round. I don't know how aware our fellow racers were of it but not including the first time out of the box the worst light he had was a .027 and most of the competition couldn't even muster a .030. So to put it boldly, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Although, as we found, when you miss the barrel... you shoot your foot.
_______________________________________
Route 66 Raceway, Joliet IL (August 5 - 6, 2006)
We're not number 6 anymore!!!
Saturday, August 5, 2006 - by Kevyn Ashbay (crew)
Another Saturday evening leaving day. Its kind of weird and makes the weekend seem longer for some reason (which I like). I had to work this morning, I got to switch from my usual Sunday so I didn't loose any hours. But, we got to the track and they were having some sort of demolition races going on so we sat out in front as people drove by leaving the dirt track. At one point they must have been melting a car because they had a jet engine whirling and you could hear the after burners. So Bob and I went up to the top of one of the sound barrier hills but all you could see was a bunch of sparks. It looked like someone was welding something really big!
Sunday, August 6, 2006
The last of the
point series races are here! It seems like only a couple weeks ago we cam for
the first race and broke the clutch. It has been a injury plagued season and we
are still exactly where we were last year, 6th place. 6th isn't bad but it seems
like we are always on that bubble of going to the division finals in Indy since
they take 6 bikes. But we are only 1 point
behind Darm who is in 5th place so all wee need to do is go a round past him and
2 rounds past Ewig and Waters and we could end up in 3rd. The points are so
close, it makes it very interesting.
The rain came in about 10:30 I think so we only got one time trial. It has also been almost 2 hours so it kinda threw us for a loop trying to dial. But everyone else is in the same boat. First round we had Erica which was funny because we were joking the the lanes that we had the same dial if we happened to race so there would be no handicap on the tree. After beating her, we got our wish and got to race Greg Darm in a battle for 5th place in the points. Both reactions were not great (which is odd for Greg) and Bob ran around him at the top end. In the semis we had to race Frank Linders who had an odd race before when Paul Waters rolled out of the staging beams and got disqualified. Our times came back and Bob had a .040 something package so no one will complain. Frank just just on his game with a teen light and right on his dial. There wasn't much we could do. The day was a success though, we moved up from 6th to 5th in the points. Our trophy will finally have something other than 6th on it!!
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