My 1st ASRA racing experience.

[gntbldr]

My first ASRA Pro Factory Sportbike race went... well, uhm. Pretty lousy.

1st off qualifying was canceled on Fri due to time constraints and then comes sunday where I waited all day for the last race which was supposed to be 12 laps and then was cut down to 8 laps from the last I heard.
I did not know they cut it down to 5 laps by the time I headed out.

Megan Stiles(sp?) was supposed to be gridded to my left but missed her grid and ended up in my only safe route for a decent start path, IMO. Then damn near elbow rubs me as she passes while there's plenty of room to her right.

I get to T8 and due to a crash on the inside of the turn I see the corner worker grab and Wave a red flag. So I started letting up, looking behind me and into getting into Red Flag mode.
Only to get out of the carousel and see NO waving red flags anywhere. I had to wait from the inside of T8 to T10 to find this out as the pack goes further and further away. By the time I get out of T10 I said screw it, I've got to get going if that was a bunk Red..!

Then comes Lap 2. I figured I had a fighting chance to get something back so I kept on moving along. Finally in lap3 while exiting T7 I see a bike entering 9 and one just exiting 8. I was like Hell Yeah! When all of the sudden I get to 10 and there comes out all the red flags.

I just paid $120 to Not qualify and get gridded by points, get falsely red flagged which screw up any chance I had to gain something back that I lost, and have a 12 lap race turned into 3. All the while I could have raced a 5 lap race for just over $50 all day long...

Uh, Yeah. I'm a bit miffed... But it was still fun. Unfortunately, the more I think about it the more upset I get...

I read in the rule book that ASRA mis grids are a docked lap if the race is less than 5 laps but I didn't see Megan's name drop down in the list. Kinda wondering about that..

Here's the front cam vid... right click and save as 72mb



Wondering if I should ask for my money back or just never race anything CCS/ASRA schedules to be last in any given weekend... lol

[gntbldr]

Got my vanity cam vid uploaded.
right click and save as 100Mb
ASRA Pro Factory Sportbike vanity cam.

Every lap out of T3, T10, and T14 I need to push my helmet up to gain more view without having to lift my head back too much. Saves on neck cramps. But on lap 1 I wave to yous. LOL

Then on lap 2 I already had a feeling that the race was a fricken joke so I made another funny into the cam.

[spyderchick]

Hey Jim, sorry to hear about the bad luck.
If you were going to protest Meghan's position you needed to do so within 30 minutes of the posting of the standings, I believe.

That's racing sometimes. At times you feel like you're on the top of the world, other days you wind up feeling like a big gorilla sat on your weekend.

Keep having fun, no matter what!

[gntbldr]

That's the funny thing, I went up to Reg. afterwards and all the staff up there said the main peeps were gone already.

No worries though. Like ya said, That's just the way it goes sometimes.  :)

Now to focus on getting the points back in Unlimited Superbikes to get back into 3rd overall. :D

[Firecat]

good video Jim...thanks for posting up

[jigs]

Thanks Jim,keep suiting up and showing up,thing's will change bro.

[Scotty Ryan]

Meghan was told by Eric Kelcher to start there.... She asked if they were going to make an announcement that the grids were changed so all the riders knew - and he told her that it would just cause more confusion....

Either way - I thought it was pretty unsafe that they had her start there - From what I understood - they got the grids wrong the first time around and that was their answer to fixing them.....

[gntbldr]

Meghan was told by Eric Kelcher to start there.... She asked if they were going to make an announcement that the grids were changed so all the riders knew - and he told her that it would just cause more confusion....

Either way - I thought it was pretty unsafe that they had her start there - From what I understood - they got the grids wrong the first time around and that was their answer to fixing them.....

Sorry Scotty. That may have been the case you were told but her body language told something totally different.

Check out this vid clip .

I even stopped behind my grid so she could get to hers if she wanted then right before the start she was still cussin herself out for screwing up her grid spot. IMO


Bri and Johnny, thanks guys.
I had a great time last weekend even with all the let downs. Feeling kinda bad for venting about the bunk race but if I don't go out there and give it another shot it'd be foolish. I'm sure there is some great fun to be had in that series.

[jigs]

Yeah dude,this racing thing's funny,you're up and down like a honeymoon dick.

[Expat2b]

Yeah dude,this racing thing's funny,you're up and down like a honeymoon dick.

Racng pragmatism at its best....priceless!

[gntbldr]

That's some funny stuff Johnny!

Well, what got me to babble about this is that I wanted to run at least 1 ASRA race this season.
Since my team mate carpooled with me to HPT I wasn't able to run it there due to him needing to be back to his 1st shift job the following monday. So i figured I'd wait till RA.

Then RA started coming up and I ran into money issues with vehicle repair costs so I took money out of my mortgage account to race. So that's the gamble I took in order to race my 1st ASRA race and it got jipped in every way shape and form.

LOL, and the ccs site is saying we went 5 laps and also that it was an 8 lap race. haha, shyeah,,, ok. I figured, "12 laps, I can maybe make something happen in 12 laps,,"

Time Constraints Shorten Event, Outcome the Same.
With a large crowd of racers in attendance at the Road America Festival of Speed made for some great racing but also made for some delays in each days program. The first time "casualty" of the weekend was ASRA qualifying, when it became apparent that not all classes could get their sessions in before the mandatory 6:00pm deadline, officials decided to grid by points instead of splitting the classes. This happened again on Sunday afternoon when multiple red flags put the program too far behind to allow for the full number of laps to be completed, causing Pro ThunderBike and Factory Pro SportBike to be shortened to 5 laps from their original distance of 8 laps.

So basically my complaint about Meghan isn't nearly as significant as what I spent in accord to what I got. hmm, Actually I wasn't really even trying to complain about her mis grid or the closeness.. was just filler to the already screwy experience

her mis grid wouldn't have changed anything even if it was a 12 lap race like it was supposed to be. She still would have beat me.

Was looking forward to going through the Whole experience and it can't be denied that i got ripped off. I had friends and family go out of their ways to come and watch my 1st pro race... if you could call it that.
That's my main complaint.

(going to try and make a funny here,, bear with me ,, ;) )
Now I'm short on my mortgage, have to sell something I didn't want to in order to go through the Pro experience, and all i have to show for it is some lousy videos.

LOL!! sorry, I wanted to make a funny like them T-shirts that say... "And all i got was this lousy T-shirt."

hahaha

[jigs]

Ha!! I like like,let's get some of those Jimmy.Yeah dude,some days you come off the track hi-fiving people you've never even met,some days you won't talk to your best friend for a half an hour!!!

[MegRyan]

So Scotty is right about how CCS decided to fix their mistake. Now as far as what happened when I pulled up on the grid is this. Eric told me to go ahead and line up on row 2 all the way to the right (making it 5 on a row) Number 116 Russ Wilke ( I may have spelt it wrong) was to be in spot 2D so I went over tp talk to him explaining that this is what Eric told me to do. He was going out for a race and I had explian to whom I would assume to be a crew chief or maybe even his father cuz they where talking last minute stratagies before he went out for the race. I had asked him not to grid up right on the wall plain and simple. I show up for my crazy grid spot and there was someone gridded right along the wall but it wasn't Russ I think it was who ever had the 3rd spot on the grid. When I got there i thought this is too unsafe and i'll just take the spot on row 3 it'll be safer. well then I noticed the 2 board was up and didn't want to get penalized for moving so I just decided to stay and if they were still going to penalize me for my wrrong grid spot I would then protest do to the mistake in the first place. I tried to get Eric to just change the grid and annouce it over the P/A cuz it would have only changed 3 peoples spot other then mine and I knew 2 of them, but he didn't want to do it. As far as the close pass goes, I don't remeber the particular start but after seeing the video clip all I can do is say sorry. The only thing I can think of was that maybe you were jump up far enough to get in my perrifreal and I didn't see you. I honestly don't know what to say.

[gntbldr]

Cool. :) Thank you for the explanation of the grid confussion. Knowing all of that now totally makes what happened during the starting drive more understandable and I don't blame you one bit.

I appreciate the appology but I don't feel it was nescessary. My appologies for being a whiney pita is probably more in order and as I mentioned it was just another crazy thing to happen with the whole experience that was the biggest waste of money that I didn't even have. An experience I waited months to have and looked forward to since I found out I was bumped to EX for this season.




Since I haven't gotten any emails back from CCS I decided to just air it all out which is why the thread got created.
Not really looking for sympathy, maybe some empathy (lol), but my intent was to surface how much of a screw up the whole thing was.


Thanks again. I've wanted your input on that tidbit since it happened and I'm sorry that you got caught up in that grid confussion. That just wasn't right. Dangerous too... but that's racing  ;)