Last race report of the year

[Clay]

As usual, a few weeks late getting this out, but here we are after the last race weekend of the year. We headed down to Barber for the WERA Nationals round. While we have no battle for points in the nationals, Caleb absolutely loves Barber so this was his reward for working so hard at Talladega. It turned out to be a weekend of mixed results, but it was still a weekend with some great positives.

Friday was practice day and Caleb needed his practice. I've come to learn that it's just Caleb's style to inch forward instead of jumping the gun. He's still cautious on his 125 and I'm more than fine with that. He hasn't had a single crash all season with this bike so I'm glad we didn't have to deal with repairing a bike and thankfully no injuries! With this though, he needs his practice. He knows he can go faster so we work through the day on where he can go faster and how. The Friday practice turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. A curse, because it rained almost the whole day. A blessing, because it rained almost the whole day! Haha. He only got the very first session of the day in the dry. However, due to the rain, the officials eventually just opened the track for open practice. Caleb was a MAD MAN! He put in 8 sessions total, and 6 of them while it was actively raining. This was great for his wet weather skill set. He no longer fears the rain, and was having a fun time while riding. He was pushing harder and harder. At the very end of the day, while everyone was either gone or packing up, Caleb was still putting in the laps. The last session of the day saw the rain stop, but the track was still soaking wet with no dry spots. He put his head down and ran a 1:57!!! For riding in the rain, this was a flying lap! So the good is that he got very comfortable in the rain. The bad is that he got no time in the dry which greatly hurt his dry performance. We were still happy because he worked hard and came away all the wiser.

Saturday and Sunday came and it just seemed that fate didn't want him to have any dry practice time before the race. Every single practice session had something happen in the way of a red flag. He probably got a total of about 7 or 8 laps in of practice time between 3 practice sessions. He really needed that dry time to improve, because he was still using all his braking points from his rainy day practice. He did push past them, but to his nature he took baby steps.

The race came and 6 riders lined up in the 125gp. Caleb did do better on his start, but he's still got a lot to learn. I think I need a new clutch basket as well, because the bike was lurching some to no fault of his own. I worked on it some before the weekend came which helped, but it's still not buttery smooth. He exited turn 1 in 3rd place and pretty much held it there for the entire race. However, even the race was red flagged!!!! Even worse is the incident happened directly in front of him when a rider low sided and another rider ran over the bike causing a pretty serious incident. I have it all recorded from his helmet cam, but out of respect for the rider who got injured, I won't publicly offer that up. Caleb ended up only running 2 seconds faster and matched his best race time finish he had last time at Barber. I have no doubt in my mind that we would have dropped another 5 seconds had we gotten the Friday practice time in the dry. But, we take what's offered to us, and I know that Caleb is far more confident in the rain. In fact, I was hoping it was going to rain! Caleb also ended the year with his first national podium!

For the video, I'm going to give you a few laps of his flying wet practice session. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juRhr2xTL1k

Thank you to all of our sponsors that helped make this year happen. Caleb has officially won the 125GP SE region championship. As far as I know he'll be promoted to Expert status next year, which will make him (as best to our knowledge) the youngest expert rider in WERA's history (he's currently still 10). We'll be doing some trackdays and some mini races this winter to keep the skills honed, but for the most part it's going to be a long winter trying to save up for next year! If we get the sponsors on board, we plan on doing the full SE schedule. If there are any folks on this board that know of any businesses that would be interested in helping out, please let them know!

Clay and Caleb