Thursday
Our dear friend Pat Boyd (#48) of Team Shoulder Check was travelling with Yves as Thursday practice was reserved for National classes. Michelle travelled Thursday evening to be able to attend her Friday practice sessions. This weekend was going to be challenging to both Michelle and Yves. Yves suffered a big crash in June at this track due to suspension issues which lead to a tire failure. Kevin of Pirelli was on hand this weekend to help Yves sort out these suspension woes. Yves’ first morning session was simply to get his markers on the track and start debugging the suspension. Yves went out and did 10 laps in the 30min. practice session with a best time of 1:33.906 for 15th fastest in that session. The afternoon session was plagued with a wet track. Yves was there for fun this weekend so he had very little intention on running in the wet. Therefore Thursday’s activities were already over for us. Michelle arrived later that evening and we got ready for Friday’s practice.
Friday
Friday was a similar day to Thursday. Hot and humid. Michelle was first up for a 15mins. practice session. Like Yves, she had not been on a race track much this year. And she had not been at Mosport for more than a year. Her first practice session was simply to get oriented with the track again. She felt a bit discouraged as many of the other women racers had been taking part in the week’s long list of track days and were already up to speed.
Yves was up next. The amateur 600 sessions were split in two as there were too many riders. Yves was once again focusing on suspension settings. But at the same time, Yves needed to post at least one good lap in case Friday’s times would be used for qualifying. This was a 20min. session so it doesn’t leave a lot of time to work on the bike during the session. Yves got to do 8 laps and posted a 1:31.382 giving him 6th place in that group.
Michelle had another practice session in the afternoon. She focused on her shifting and being in the proper gear and was able to reduce her lap times by 6 seconds.
The final practice session for us was Yves. The tires were getting near the end. These were older tires from a previous race weekend. But they were ok to use for our suspension tuning. But unfortunately, they were starting to slide and Yves struggled to get a good lap. That session, Yves was only able to post a 1:32.965 for 13th fastest. However, Yves did use that session to see if he could last the entire 20mins session at that pace. His lap times were all within half a second of each other.
Saturday
The morning featured more practice sessions for both Michelle and Yves. The afternoon would host the final race for Michelle and Yves’ official qualifying session.
Yves pushed hard in the morning’s session as the weather forecast was iffy for the afternoon. This meant that there was a good chance that this morning’s practice times would be used instead of qualifying. With fresh tires, Yves pushed hard. Again the groups were split in two. Yves was part of the fast group of riders. In that session, Yves posted a 1:30.782 on lap 9. With one lap to go, Yves tried to set a faster lap but lost the front wheel in turn 3. Lucky for Yves, he was able to keep the bike up with his knee and stay on the gas until the front wheel hooked up again. A scary moment for Yves and a faster lap was not meant to be…
Michelle’s final race was up that afternoon. For the first time since her first race, she had a great start and joined the racers in front of her. Unfortunately, a racer in the expert class a few rows in front of her had a mechanical failure and she was unable to maneuver around her quickly enough to stay with the pack. Byturn 2, Michelle had lost her lead. She was able to keep up with one rider for a lap, but that rider came into pit lane and found herself alone with no one to motivate her to go faster. Michelle was disapointed of her finish (not finishing last, but finishing really far behind), but all variables considered, she did well by finishing and finishing in one piece. Regardless of her finish, she was happy to be able to get out there and support the series by making the starting grid bigger by one bike.
The official qualifying session for amateur 600 was up. Weather was holding ok so we had a nice warm and dry track. Yves tried very hard to get a fast lap. Unfortunately, Yves couldn’t manage to time his exit of turn 5b properly to get “hooked” on the back of another rider and catch a draft up the back straight. With 4 mins. to go, Yves pitted to discuss with Michelle and fellow racer friend, Yanick (Pro #96). With only two minutes to go, Yves was sent back out to try and post a good time. While exiting pit lane, Yves exited at the same time as another fast rider. Yves rushed to follow him but that rider had the similar thought. He got on his brakes and made Yves go in front so he could catch Yves’ draft on the back straight. Both riders now passed in front of the starting line with 47 seconds left in the session. This was Yves’ last lap to post a good time. Yves stayed on his butt and concentrated on his 5b exit to benefit from the draft. That’s when Yves posted his best time of 1:30.436 for a 12th place qualifying position. Yves would have liked to have been in the 1:29s but was very pleased with this result.
Sunday
Another day of iffy weather. We spent most of the day sitting around as it rained on and off. The only thing on our schedule for the day was Yves’ final. It was up in the afternoon. Like usual, Yves’ race kept getting pushed off to make time for feature races in prime weather conditions. Finally Yves’ race was up. The track was dry and it looked like a promising race. Yves was relaxed and road up to his starting position without much anxiety. The green light and Yves gets a decent start. But that’s where Yves’ plan ended. No no, Yves didn’t crash. But since Yves hadn’t race much this year, he forgot to plan further ahead than his start. So Yves got passed a lot during that first lap. In all fareness, it didn’t help that everyone had warned Yves about a major problem in turn 5b. The rain had brought a stream of sand/mud accross the track. Many pro riders had crashed in that spot in the previous race. Regardless, Yves kept riding. A few crashes happened here and there. The most annoying crash was someone who crashed in turn 2. Unfortunately, his front fender remained in the middle of the track. Literally in the middle of the downhill run and right in the middle of the width. It stayed there for the majority of the race. This made turn 2 very tricky as it’s a blind corner. So you would take your normal line and have to alter it once you could spot the fender. Yves was not running smoothly so he decided to keep his pace down. His lap times averaged in the 1:33s. He finally managed to make a pass on someone going into turn 8 after benefitting from a good draft. Unfortunately, the race was red flagged on that lap so they counted previous lap positions. Yves finished 19th but finished in one piece!
Well, I figured I’d give an update as to our Mosport testing. Please forgive my typos as I’m single finger typing today. It was a great morning with temps of 25C in the morning. I went out first session for about 10 laps and I already had several laps in the low 1:31s. After that session, we noticed my front tire was not holding up. So we made some suspension adjustments to try and solve the problem. Keep in mind that these tires were near the end of their life cycles but I don’t normally see this kind of wear. We figure if the adjusments don’t solve it, I’ll switch tires.
Ater that session, I had a chance to walk up the track to see where I crashed. I saw a 1-2 foot black strip from my front tire giving up. The track was smooth and nothing around that area caused the bike to unsettle. Unfortunately, the front tire did not get better. And looking at it afterwords shows it got worse and I was basically on marbles. Despite the tire being old, we think it equally had to do with the fact the tire was the incorrect compound for that track and weather. It was later discovered that the fault was probably due to incorrect suspension settings.
The morning was plagued with rain. At least it was a light rain. Michelle had never been in the rain so this track days was a perfect was for her to get some experience. Our morning started out with some tire changes to get her bike setup for the rain. Yves had spent a great deal of time in the rain recently in the opening round of the RACE superseries so he opted to focus on helping Michelle with riding feedback and setup. Michelle was actually the only rider out on the track for the first half hour. Furthermore, less than a handful of riders actually went to play in the rain. Her initial lap times were as you would expect for first time out on rain tires. But as she got in more and more laps, she picked up the pace and cleaned up her lines. Unfortunately, another learning curve is also quickly experienced in rain riding and that’s traction limits. Michelle suffered a crash when setting up for turn 5 (hairpin) of the Pro track. She is not 100% sure of what exactly she did wrong but from other riders behind her, it seems she may have been a bit abrupt on either brakes or body movements when setting up for her turn. She lost the front with very little lean angle, which means she slapped down on the track hard injuring her knee. The bike only had some minor damages but Michelle was not in the best of conditions to return to the track that day.
Yves had the opportunity to do a few sessions in the afternoon. The track was still damp but Yves opted to run on the Pirelli Super Corsa tires. Traction was limited and caused the rear to step out and drift for the first few laps until the tires came up to temp. Thanks to the Penske rear shock recently installed, the rear wheel would hook-up smoothly and allow Yves to get good feel from the bike when experiencing rear-wheel spin. Yves’ laptimes continued to get better as the conditions improved. By late afternoon, despite the cool track, tires approaching 200 laps and limited gearing, Yves was consistently and significantly faster than his 2004 personal best laptime on this circuit.
My first qualifier started mid/late afternoon. The rain was still coming down. I lined up on the front row. I wasn’t very confident as I suffered a very big and fast high-side in turn one, one year ago at this exact round in similar conditions. I got an acceptable start and somewhat kept my position. I got passed by a bike or two but I didn’t really care. I knew I just wanted to repeat my practice performance and simply qualify. Within a couple of laps, the bikes started to crash. A couple of bikes started to go down in turn 5 which is a scary corner in the wet. However, those bikes slid across the width of the corner dropping gasoline and oil all over the corner. Next lap around, I see another rider go down in that corner, than another, etc… Many more leaving more oil and gas on that corner. We could barely go thru that corner without sliding even when the bikes were straight up. Scary stuff!!! I managed to survive this crash fest and finished 10th for my split qualifier which put me 20th for my two Superbike starts. What a crappy qualifier!
Next came my 600 final. I was excited about this one cause I would start from the 4th row with many of my fast friends. This would allow me to go very fast through corner one and detach myself from the slower riders. Light goes green and I got a good launch. I start looking for a way through the riders in front of me. And then bang! A friend of mine in front of me gets tangled with another rider just before corner one. He goes down hard and now I have him and his bike sliding in front of me. I throw my hand up and brake hard. I managed to avoid and miraculously, the remaining field of bikes managed to avoid hitting him too. I got passed by many bikes and I was sure RACE would stop the race. But no red flag and the race was on. But it took too long for me to gather myself and make up those lost spots. So another mediocre finish for me with a 14th place.My last race was the 2nd leg of my Superbike race at 4:30pm. Just to annoy me further, it started to rain just before the race. Lucky for us, we had brought Michelle’s R6 so we setup her bike for rain. I had tested on it on Friday and it performed rather well. No one knew what tires to choose. The ground was wet and the sun was trying to come through but there were still some menacing clouds in the sky. Dry setup is what we chose. I get to my crappy 20th place starting point and notice most of us are on dries but some on wets. I get another acceptable launch but I get stuck again in traffic going into corner one losing more positions. I wasn’t sure about my traction on lap 1 and 2 as the track was wet. I kept pushing hard. By lap 3, the track was dry. Then I started to apply the pressure. And I also remembered how to pass people!!! So I went onto the attack passing as many riders as I could as quickly as I could. Michelle noticed that after passing a rider, I would open up a massive gap very quickly. My pace was fast and I was solid on the bike. Unfortunately, there is not much you can do in 8 laps when you have a bad start. So 13th place was the best I could deliver. I would have probably been in the top 10 if the race would have been 12 laps as originally scheduled.
We had rushed like mad to get the bikes ready for this day. We actually finished worked on the bikes at 10:30pm the night before. So getting up at 4:00am was a little hard on the body. We got there at 7:30am which was good timing for registration. We were 3rd in line. After that, we made our way to the Fabi pits and were able to find a spot with some friends right on pit lane. Michelle’s bike was the first one sent to tech. We knew that the best time for an open track was early in the morning. Glad we did that as the track got VERY busy throughout the day. So busy that we skipped our late afternoon sessions. None of us could get a clean lap and were just playing in a freight-train of bikes. Besides, we were both running on tires which had in excess of 100laps on them. So we didn’t mind the early end to our day as it gave us a chance to talk to friends we hadn’t seen all winter.