tiny ninja racer

How in the world did I get 1st place in a class that is designated for bikes much larger and faster than my own? It’s a little sordid but I’ll try to keep it brief. The group of guys I hang out with at the track run in a class called superbike. Superbike means you can highly modify you motorcycle. Put engines in frames they weren’t designed for, mount different wheels, and swap out original parts for ones with high performance race spec. This is opposed to bikes known as supersport, relatively stock bikes that are DOT approved and sold at regular dealerships. Well, one of our guys was racing his superbike in a supersport class and there was a bit of good natured grousing about this. The point was made by someone, “Geez even Duane’s 250 Ninja is more legal in that class than racer X’s.” “You know if Duane raced that class, was beat by racer X, Duane could protest it and have him disqualified. Hey, we should all race that class and have Duane protest all of us including racer X!” As the rules read, you can protest as many bikes you want as long as you finish behind them. Thus I was the perfect candidate because it was a forgone conclusion I would finish last.
And so it went, I put my 250cc bike in a 450 class and was handily spanked. I was a moving hay bale, just trying to keep my nose down and a keep a predictable line in the corners so as not to get run over. The protest form was filled out for me ahead of time and given to me to sign. I rolled in off the track, took off my helmet, walked over to the race referee and feigned outrage, “There were “illegal” bikes on the track while I was trying to race!” Here is official results paperwork from OMRRA.

DNS stands for "did not start." Andrew and Frank decided not to race because it had been raining and the track was pretty slick. That’s how I got a first place trophy.

Woo hoo! My last race weekend of the season and I walked away with two trophies! What a way to finish the season. It was raining HARD, and when the track is wet it is much slipperier than the street, simple corners become incredibly difficult. Other riders with more money, proper sized rims, mount special rain tires and they have a distinct advantage. The Tiny Ninja has an odd size wheel for the track so there is no track specific rubber. I use a very good street tire that just happens to work well on the track, a dry track, but when it’s wet, it’s all done for, the tire slides easily. In corners it jumps out in small jerking motions. On the back stretch I can spin it up and the back end starts to come around slowly. Scary as hell. My bike only produces 28 horse power at the most, while guys with 50 to 70 horses were saying how planted their bike felt. I could only attribute that to their greater weight and superior rubber compound. When I came off the track I was happy to have just made it back without crashing. There were lots of wrecks. As I’d go around the track and come up on a crash, I’d recognize the rider and it would pass through my mind, “Damn they’re a good rider, they wrecked?” It would play with my psyche and slow me down.

The season is over, time to turn my attention to next year. I’ve been thinking about getting the next size up in motorcycles. It would be a Kawasaki Ninja 500 , the 500 is completive against the light weight superbike guys I hang out with. But would the dollar to fun ratio still be as high? The 250 is a starter bike for people on the street, subsequently it’s being crashed often and parts are plentiful. As much as I’d like a faster more competitive bike I may stay right here for now. This winter I’ll get another engine replace the internals in the suspension and do a host of other items. For one more year I’ll still wave the Tiny Ninja flag and try to get others to race theirs.

What happened last race weekend? PLENTY!
First and most regrettably Brooks Cooper crashed out on Saturdays first practice session. He rides a Yamaha FZR 400 and is my main man on the track. That also makes him my main guy I want to beat. I ‘ve been able to just squeak that out a few times, but I had over a two months off from the track and my skills and lap times reflected it. Come that Saturday morning I swung a leg over the Tiny Ninja and it felt like the first time again. “Whoa, time to take it easy,” I thought. Brooks on the other hand was keyed up, ready to kick ass and take names. He had clear goals in his head on what he wanted to work on. He yelled at me through his helmet as we were getting ready, “Turn one, forth gear, 10,000 RPMs! I’m going to do it!” I wished I had such a clear agenda on what I needed to work on. Hell, I just wanted to get over my butterflies. I’m usually able to dog Brooks, nip at his heals the whole way, but this morning he took off and it wasn’t to be. He was out of there like the wind. Buh-bye. “Oh crap,” I thought, this is going to be a long weekend. I dallied around the track watching my brake markers come up slowly as I was already full into the brakes, long before I should have been. Jeffery, a much faster and more mature racer than I, was scrubbing in new tires, towing me around, showing me his lines. Then as I came down the front stretch there it was, a plume of dust up in the air at turn one’s mid point. Turn one is at the end of the HUGE straight away, you need to scrub off crazy speed or else you, A) overshoot it and simply ride straight off the track and into the grass, B) throw the bike into it with such speed and such an angle that the tires don’t hold, the bike slips out from under you and again wind up into the grass. Brooks followed through on plan B. In fact as we came around it became obvious what happened. Hard parts of his bike had gouged long scars into the track surface perpendicular to the direction that should be carried by a racer. Ouch, he slid on the pavement. Turn one has a BIG grassy runoff so he wasn’t too hurt. He really banged up his right hand though; his ring finger and pinky had been pummeled and was beginning to swell. The bike? A big hole was ground through the fairing and the exhaust was dangling like a logger’s limb in a chainsaw accident. Handle bars? Bent like an apostrophe. I want a set of his rear sets though, for the trough left in the track surface, they didn’t even look bent. Brooks headed home; he planned on making it a short day anyway. He didn’t show up for race-day-Sunday either which in a way worked out for me. My lap times were down by a full two seconds and he would have spanked me handily. Also with the reduced field in Small Bore Classic, I wound up getting a trophy. (!) I came in second for the weekend. Mostly because others crashed out or had DNFs. (Did Not Finish)

Something rings very clear in my memory as Brooks described what happened, he repeated how everything felt just right and that everything was coming together. That, right there, that is a repeated phrase amongst riders who are recounting their crashes, I’ve heard long distance touring guys say it, squids, and now racers. In fact I said the same thing last time I slid off in a corner. My get-off was on the first morning’s first practice too. Everything felt great and I was pushing the envelope; the same as Brooks had. What is there to learn? First the obvious, both he and I crashed early in the session, which means cold tires. Second, IT’S STILL MORNING, a cold track surface. But less obvious and a little more ambiguous, this phrase, “It all felt great,” should be a knuckle rapping me on the noggin. Next time I catch myself saying that in my head I’m going to ratchet it down a few notches. Pushing the envelope is how we learn and go faster, but at least I’m going to do it with more trepidation.

Onto another subject, I just talked to Janice, the incredibly gracious woman who is the only person paid by OMRRA to handle all of our mundane paperwork, she told me there are usually between 300 to 350 racers each weekend. Wow that seems like a lot to me. I’m still surprised I'm the only one on a non-vintage 250 four stroke.

It's around 9PM now and I'm at work. The show I'm running is in auto pilot for the moment and all I can think of are the last minute details I have to take care of tonight. My checklist of stuff is probably 35 to 40 items deep. Everything is piled up in the garage ready to slide into the truck tomorrow morning at 6AM. Tonight I still need to go to the store to fill up the cooler with food. Jen has invited people so I'm going to try to bring snacks others might like. Sharing a pit with someone else would really ease the burden both logistically and financially. My friend Pat is talking about getting a race bike. He's hot on the small bore in-line fours; FZR 400, RVF400 etc. It would be cool if he found one; I know he'd kick butt on it.
I'm of the opinion fresh brake fluid feels best immediately after you change it so I'm saving that as the last thing tonight. Maybe in the future I'll start doing that at the track.

I just got an email from Jen that was also addressed to EVERYONE. She wrote something like, “Hey, Duane’s racing this weekend, come on out.” Jen is my greatest fan and supporter. She is responsible for setting up this blog and the accompanying website. I’m both flattered and grateful she wants to show up at the track hang out, I don’t ask her to. Her and my mutual friends are not motorcycle related, having them show up at the track would be extra special. If one of our friends is reading this and you decide to come out, you can find our pit by looking for my bike, it has the number plate 724, it’s grey and black, you’ve probably seen it sitting in our garage. It would be nice to see you.

Today is Monday and yesterday, to my chagrin, I realized I hadn't sent in my pre registration form for this up coming weekend's race. It needs to be in five days before hand. I just faxed it this morning from my work. As I filled out the form I was hit with sticker shock-AGAIN-. $100 for Saturday’s practice, $45 to enter my bike in the particular class I want to race. $35 for mandatory medical insurance, and $65 to rent my timing transponder, (I don't own one they are $315 to purchase). $245 total, damnnnnn........ I can find sets of tires for that much!

I've changed the gearing on the bike for this upcoming weekend. When this bike was on the street I geared it up by going one tooth larger on the front sprocket. As it turns out, getting into 6th on the front straight was impractical, even though the straight is relatively long; it's not long enough to buy me time to get the bike up to the appropriate RPM to shift.
I ordered EBC HH pads for the front brakes. I'm going to bleed that line before every race weekend. I've got a steel braided line and speed bleeder on it now.
I finally broke down and purchased a race fuel can. I saw at least two guys dump gas all over their bike last race weekend so I made sure to get the kind with an of/off valve in the hose.
Last time at the track I started with a topped off tank and went all day without worry of running out. This time I'm going to try to race with "just enough" gas in the tank to finish. The little Ninja carries about 5 gallons in the tank and gas is about 6 pounds per gallon. That will cut my weight on the top of the bike significantly. One gallon to finish a race should be plenty.
The bike didn't pass inspection last race because my number plate up front was too small. I've now filled in the groove around the headlight plate with epoxy, sanded the hell out of it and painted the whole face white, essentially enlarging the area. It looks pretty good and I was proud of the job. I made plans to take it to Joe's Sign shop on my lunch hour. I brought the truck down town with the fairing and paid for the premium parking so it would be close by. Then, right on the top of my lunch hour I could jump in and rush it across town. But once I got there, the first thing out of Joe's mouth was, "Oh man take that out of here I'm so busy I can't work on anything else today." DOH! All this week I'm working 9am till 11pm, right up until race day and I was glad to get it to him on this lunch hour. I explained this to him while he worked furiously on some other project and he agreed to let me leave the fairing there to be picked up by Jen later this week.
I thought going fast around the track would be the hard part, no; it’s all the other ancillary stuff. Like folding canopies, buckets to fill with water to hold down the canopies, a short hose to get water into the buckets because the spigots at the track are nearly ground level, cam lock straps to attach the buckets, folding chairs, cooler of food, insurance papers, spare parts, comprehensive tool kit, bike stands, etc etc etc. Good lord, somewhere in there I need to remember to keep my tuck in turn nine.

This blog is chronicling my first year efforts racing motorcycles. Even though I’ve been riding street bikes for nearly 20 years now, this is my first foray into racing. I seem to be a person of frugal practicality. Thus I’m racing a bike I’ve already owned, a street bike that has proven very fast on the street, so fast in fact that I’ve aquired more tickets on it than nearly all of my other bikes combined. The irony is that this is the smallest least powerful bike I’ve owned. Maybe not the best candidate for the track but at least I get to go fast on it legally. Also, I have not ridden past the capabilities of the machine. What’s stopping me from going even faster is not the bike, it’s me. As it turns out, the skills I have on the street have transferred poorly to the track. My lovely wife Jen has video taped me going through a certain set of corners, immediately preceded by more experienced (faster) riders and the differences are striking. What feels like ass kicking speeds and techniques when on the bike, clearly are resulting in SLOW times and klutzy looking riding when compared to others. It’s time to reprogram the head. Where sticking my knee down up on Sky Line Blvd is juvenile, dangerous, and squidly, it’s a necessity on the track. Looking around me when riding to the store is a safe riding technique, on the track it equates to breaking my tuck and losing my position on the seat. It took a long time to learn these street skills, now it’s time to learn something new.