Blackhawk Farms, August round

Blackhawk Farms Race Report
Vol. 5, #4
Blackhawk Farms Raceway, South Beloit, IL. - August 22, 2010

As the August round approached CCS was going through some serious changes. This year has been marred with low bike turnout due to several factors and in an effort to combat dwindling resources CCS decided to switch the last two Blackhawk Farms rounds to one day race formats.
Having raced in the Great Plains region, I was used to this style format but due to the schedule with very little rest time in between races I made the decision to drop my Lightweight Formula 40 race. I hate to do this but right now I'm doing much better in points in Thunderbike and Lightweight SuperSport. I could pick up another race further down in the schedule to get more track time but I decided this late in the date to concentrate on just these two classes.

With Troy and Craig out with damaged bikes and Mike not quite ready with his, Janet and I took off for the races at 4:00am on Sunday. With heavy fog all the way from Waterloo to the track it was already a pretty intense start!
Tech and practice went well as I was armed with new tires and brake pads for this raceday. I'd had a real breakthrough in lower laptimes at the last round so I was very confident in what I could accomplish.

Right around lunchtime, Troy and Sheila, Jeff Elenz, Duane and Delores rode up on their bikes. I knew they were planning on coming but with the heavy fog earlier I was a little surprised to see them. Of course, it's always fun to have a cheering section!!

Thunderbike - 2nd!!
Thunderbike turned out to be a single wave start which really helped me as I got right in behind a couple of Experts right away and they towed me around for the first few laps. After lap three I actually tried to get around each of them. I never got that done but I was definitely clicking off some good laps and felt great running with them. On lap 7 I had a run on the guy just in front of me going into turn 7 and as I stuck my nose on the inside I ended up doing a pretty serious stoppie! I recovered alright but I DID find the limit of my late braking skills!!
I was very happy to take 2nd in this race and found out later that I'd improved on last month's best lap times in the process!!

Lightweight SuperSport
This race was one I was really looking forward to as my confidence level was up and I was currently in 2nd place in the region in this class.
I went out on the sighting lap getting settled in when one of the experts came by. I thought I would see where he tipped in on turn 4 so instead of watching my line, I watched him and you guessed it, I target fixated on him and the next thing I knew off the track I went!!! Now I know better than to do this but it caught me out and this time turn 4 bit me. Right into the Air Fence I went! Fortunately for me I was uninjured and so was the bike except for a bunch of grass jammed into it all over the left side and a broken oil cooler scoop so that race was over before it even started.

The weekend didn't end like I'd hoped but I had accomplished faster lap times and a 2nd place plaque and a hard lesson learned. Since Hearland Park's round has been cancelled that just leaves the September Blackhawk round before the season ends so I've got some time to get my head screwed on straight and finish the season strong!