In a nutshell: New again. First
time out with AFM; first time at Infineon; alot of fun!
Race #3 of the AFM schedule,
held at the famous (infamous?) Infineon Raceway, drew the Möbius camp out of SoCal, once again in a joint effort with our
good friends at NSP Racing, to head north and enjoy the weekend with some new faces. Reputed for having immense grids,
huge overall turnouts and lots of good competition, AFM didn't let down. The operation was run like clockwork, with
nary a glitch, despite the alarmingly large number of incidents reported by club officials. With something
on the order of ~800 racers, one can easily imagine that the number of off track excursions and crashes might be high, but the
word of nearly 100 incidents in one, single corner during Saturday practice alone was early indication that the AFM boys aren't
playing around!
But, the theme this month
is that of things ‘nouveau’ and this theme perpetuated itself even before leaving base camp in Huntington Beach. For the trip north, the boys decided to use the Möbius Racing transporter and pull
the NSP trailer in tow. This meant some new hardware needed fitment to the Möbius
van in the form of a hitch and the relevant accouterments. Without much fuss,
the plan came together for the hitch and despite the requisite last minute issues with wrapping bodywork around a recently
purchased ’95 kit radiator – which worked quite well on the weekend – the Möbius rig arrived at the NSP
headquarters in Pasadena late Thursday night in aniticipation
of a timely departure on Friday morning.
As a matter of course, the
final component to link the hardware of the effort, namely the hitch, decided to be a bit of a fuss and incurred a three trip
penalty to the auto store in search of the elusive 4” drop that in the end provided a level mate for the van and trailer. And, with a sigh of relief and gleam of anticipation of the proverbial road ahead,
the boys piled into the van and the party set sail for Sonoma.
Now, it would be inaccurate
to say there was no skeptcism over the ability of the van to lug its new found mate up the nasty hills surrounding the LA
basin, but alas no problems were encountered and after a mild 7 hours of lumbering up the Golden State Freeway and its bifurcated
relatives the boys arrived at Infineon just before 19:00. A complete Infineon
virgin, Vince was immediately impressed with the facility albeit slightly muffled due to a bit of trepidation regarding the
myriad concrete walls that line the lower portion of the course. Infineon is
known to be a nasty place to crash and has a checkered past. The facility has
received a number of quite significant changes since its inception hosting motorcycle racing, most due to safety concerns
about particular parts of the course. Unfortunately, as most racers know, it
is still not the safest place to get off a bike so the first priority was quite readily established as staying safe and on
two wheels for the entirety of the weekend!
After having
setup the pit on Friday evening, having a bite to eat and promptly off into slumber, the team awakened Saturday morning and
began the familiarization process with AFM’s peculiarities for registration, tech and the other relevant and necessary
functions that make organizing possible. As it turns out, the practice rotation
was broken into six groups based on previous laptime for each rider. Without
any previous time on record, Vince was forced into the slowest of the six groups, Group #1.
C’est la vie. It actually was a mixed blessing, as it turned out
to be one of the less congested of the practice groups. The downside, of course,
was that our rider was forced to search harder to locate where time could be had, as opposed to being shown outright.
Sans the safety issues, it
remains undeniably that Infineon is among the best possible road course configurations in the US: Its lack of any straight sections of significant length; its undulating – or, in some cases, downright
extreme - elevation changes; its combination of long fast sweepers, medium speed corners and razor sharp hairpin; its blind
crests, off camber corners, and open corner exits continue to challenge all riders….and their machines! Setup for Infineon is notoriously difficult and is especially critical for two-stroke machines and their
inherently thin power bands. The internal gear setting, or mis-setting as the
case may be, can have profound influence on the lap time.
Of course, this was no matter
for Vince. After missing the first practice session, despite a true attempt to
the contrary, Vince was out on course for the second practice and his first laps on the track.
As it was reported, the first few laps were more than a little confusing. The
out lap started fine with our man heading out the pit lane exit and up the lefthand T1 hill.
The extremely steep approach to righthand T2 means the off-camber corner is approached and apexed blindly but affords
an open exit to ease back onto the gas before pinning it and, with the assistance of gravity, rocketing down toward lefthand
T3 which appears as a wall, literally. As the suspension compresses fully, the
bike is cranked hard back to the right for righthand, blind, cresting, zero camber T3A.
Now, some corners we call ‘blind’, but T3A at Infineon gives this a whole new meaning. On the out lap, Vince nearly went off course at 20mph simply because there was no way to tell where the
heck the track was going!! Quickly noting it probably prudent to follow someone
else, Vince made sure to follow someone (anyone!) for the remainder of this and the following several laps; in retrospect
quite amusing. T3A exits steeply downhill and remains so on the approach and
through the righthand T4. With a tendency to fool the rider into an ill-advised,
early turn-in, T4’s downhill exit propels the rider through the fast, sweeping T5 allowing acceleration all the way
through the corner as the track briefly points up again before having to twist the bike back over to the left while decending
down Infineon’s well know lefthand Carousel, T6. With in excess of a 180°
sweep, T6 seems to never end and when it does the rider finds themselves bottoming out onto the dragstip that runs through
the center of the road course layout and pointing again uphill, while accelerating hard and continuing a slight bank to the
left on the approach to the ‘not-so-blind’ T7 double apex right hairpin.
Not really a hairpin, since it is taken with a quite wide line, T7’s exit points the rider back downhill through
the sweeping and increasingly-large-in-magnitude ‘esses’ section of the course known as T8 & 8A. Although four distinct bends form this ‘corner’, it is the last one which must be executed
properly as it exits onto a short downhill chute to the new chicane section, T9A. Providing
one of the best passing points on the course, the right-left chicane is extremely tight in order to force the rider to slow
sufficiently to reduce the chance of an incident in the following T10 right hand sweeper which can be taken quite quickly
otherwise and provides no runoff with the exception of some K rail barrier; not the thing to encounter while at ton-up speed! Out of T10 and it’s a quick squirt on the gas before dropping the anchor for
the tight T11 right hairpin. More on that later…
This first practice went
off without incident in cool conditions, Vince completing 3 laps while finding his way around at a pace of high 2:01. The second practice, some 3 hours later (emphasizing the loss of the first practice
of the day!), saw our man becoming a bit more comfortable with the layout and navigating throught the traffic offered by the
practice group allocation to the tune of mid 1:56. As it was noted this was the
best time in the group, the thought was given to attempt to bump up to another group, but the relative lack of traffic was
too much to forego and it was decided – for better or worse – to stay in the first group.
The final practice of the
day saw some more improvement to mid 1:53 as the course started to become more familiar.
It was also at this point that our man decided that Infineon really is a fantastic place as evidenced by the smile
from ear to ear inside his helmet; it’s the roller coaster of racetracks!
Sunday morning came with
sun and slightly warmer temps. With only one more opportunity to head out on
track, Vince was up early and ready to roll out on track at 08:00 for the full duration of the morning warmup. Again posting the fastest time in the group and improving further, Vince came up to 1:52. Now, if we can only find about 10 more seconds!!
The schedule
showed Race 12 (of 13) to be Formula 2, so the team settled in for a bit of downtime, double checking the last bits and bobbins
to make sure all was fit for the race. This also afforded the boys the opportunity
to survey the paddock, track and generally relax.
16:15 rolls around and its
first call to the grid for Formula 2. A whopping 53 entries are on the 12 row
deep grid sheet; Vince at P42 in row 10 based on the lack of any previous class points, but not-so-late registration.
A quick warmup lap and the
one board is sideways. Vince brings the bike up to full song and the green flag
flies. Our man makes a rocketship launch up the inside of the grid heading into
T1, handily picking off a gaggle of riders and likely 3 rows enroute. A tentaive
pass through T2 and the field begins to file in and the pass-fest begins. Finally
able to see what the pace around Infineon’s amusement park-like layout should be, Vince is able to quickly lop another
6 seconds off his previous pace. Unfortunately, our man was his usual overzealous-self
and almost ended the party on the first lap when, after getting sucked into the hairpin T11 too hot and pogo-ing the back
wheel up into the air 5 times while trying in vein to haul the bike down to a speed with which he could make the corner, Vince
overshot the turn and ran the bike a bit wide, loosing three spots just gained in the previous run down the course from T7. Bummer. No matter thoe as it was back
on the gas and lesson learned. The race was shortened from 8 laps to 7, but within
that span our man passed, and passed and passed some more…in the ending moving up a staggering 35 spots to cross the
line in 7th, only 0.5sec (or maybe another corner ;) ) off of 6th spot.
Not a bad way to come in 7th! And, as is always most important,
the team and our pals made it through the entire weekend with lots of smiles and no major incidents. The team can now only wait to go back up and do it again!
Race conditions:
RAD=90.5%; P=30.75"; T=77°;
H=41%
Sunny, Dry, Breezy
