Gallery/2008/03

Gallery » 2008 » 03_23

Rehm Race Days @ Valencia (03/23 – 03/24): I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try out another world-class circuit while here in Europe. So I loaded up the van and brought along my friend Brad to check out Valencia Circuit in Spain. The Rehm Race Days (http://www.rehmracedays.de/) organization is a great setup! They run all the circuits throughout Europe and provide plenty of tracktime combined with fun and competitive races. Brad and I had pre-paid for the Monday trackday, but showed up a day early to see if we could “weasel” our way into an extra day if they had room on Sunday. Lucky for us they did and we got in for cheap! So it all worked out great! The staff was very friendly and fluent in just about every spoken language in the European Union. It really makes one feel under educated. : / I had crashed the previous weekend at Hockenheim and damaged my rightside engine case to the point where I was worried it would no longer be oil tight. Due to a bit of “tail chasing” and Easter Holiday, I was unable to secure a new cover for the engine. In-fact it was a bit of a chore just to locate a store that sold J-B weld! I globbed a bunch of J-B Weld onto the crankcase cover the day before we packed up the van and hoped it would hold once the engine was on track and pressurized. I kept my fingers crossed and we headed out to Spain. The trip was 1600km through France and the coast of Spain. Unfortunately for Brad and I the poor weather and traffic jams added an additional 2hrs to our trip. The weather in Valencia was much better than France and Germany, but still very windy being so close to the coast. We finally got on the track around 2pm and they had an open pit until 6pm that evening with no groups. 4hrs of track time at Valencia for only 100EUR was a bargin! Most people had run the races earlier that day and had already been there for a day or two prior, so the track was pretty sparsely populated with traffic. I ran a few test laps just to make sure that the engine case repair was going to hold. Every check proved to be oil tight and the engine temp was stable. So after a few more pits I was able to actually have some fun. I was unsuccessful in capturing any onboard since my crash at hockenheim destroyed my camera. : ( Luckily my buddy Brad brought along his camera and mounted it aboard his ZX-10. We got tons of video and tons of tracktime. The skies stayed blue, but the wind was still a bit strong. Not strong enough to ruin our fun though. The next day they organized the morning into group sessions of A, B, C, D (slow to fast). Brad and I each got two 20min sessions. During these sessions they took the best lap time as a “qualifying time” for the 2hr endurance race scheduled for the afternoon. We entered the race on Brad’s ZX-10 and he set a qualifying time of 1’55” which gridded us 14th of 40 teams! Way to go Brad! The best I could muster on the 600 was a 1’57”. The endurance race was a bit of an afterthought for us (having decided to enter the race only that morning). So being a bit unprepared, we sent Brad out to pitroad for his very first race ever! With no plan or pit signals setup, we just decided to pit whenever we saw the fuel light. Brad ran extremely well and consistently dropped his lap times running a best of a 1’54”. Eventually the light came on and he headed for the pits where we very calmly re-fueled and changed riders. Did I mention that all the other teams were running two separate bikes? So all the other teams had to do was basically hand off the transponder and head out on a completely fresh bike. Brad and I had to take the time to actually refuel. We had no clock or watch with us so we had no idea how long the first tank of gas had actually lasted. : ) So out I went figuring I’d just stay out until we ran out of gas or I saw the checkered flag. Unfortunately for us the gas ran out first. I have no idea how long I was actually out there, but it felt like forever having to muscle the big liter bike around the track. I wasn’t able to match Brad’s pace and could only muster a best of 1’57” on his bike. At one point I was actually thinking that I might have just missed the checkered flag… : ) Luckily the fuel ran out on the last half of the track and I was able to coast it into the pits where Brad was waiting a bit confused. I explained what happened and we made a slight miscalculation in refueling the bike once again not knowing how much time was remaining. So a few laps later Brad returned with an empty tank again. We topped it off to the brim this time making sure to have enough to finally make it to the checkered flag. Too bad it was only two laps away. : ( The extra pit probably cost us a few places. So we ended up finishing 13th out of 40, I’m pretty sure the fuel miscalculations prevented us from reaching the top ten. Too bad that we were unable to send Brad home with a trophy for his first race (they gave out trophies to the top 10 teams). : ( Some of the lap times posted were very impressive. I believe we saw 1’36”, which is only 6 seconds slower than Loris Caparossi’s MotoGP lap record! Wow! That being said, I believe we can be very proud with our finish. After the endurance race, they opened up pit lane again from 3 to 6pm with no groups. So again, there was plenty of track time for the money! All in all an excellent weekend! We made some new friends and will most definitely attend more of the Rehm Race days throughout Europe! Word…