Virginia International Raceway
By David Podolsky, Contributing Editor

Every year when I prepare for the first race I liken it to a military effort on the road.  Items are checked off the list, spare parts are packed and every possible tool is taken along.  Especially when racing a Ducati, you want to be as self-sufficient as possible since some vendors only have Japanese parts in stock.

We headed to VIR for the first WERA round and I took Jamie Falzone along for his first club race ever.  Jamie is a Sportbike Track Time instructor, so it was not like he hadn’t seen a track before but getting into the flow of a race weekend and the 10 hour travel time was new.

My Ducati 1198S was ready to go since only minor changes had been made from last season.  Slightly different suspension set up thanks to Mike Fitzgerald of Ohlins and a Star Lane Quick Shifter from Yoyodyne. The latter would become a stumbling block as the weekend began.

I wanted to take Friday practice to get back in the groove of going 160mph after a winter of running in my woods thinking about racing.  Over the winter I had taken the Yamaha Champion School and wanted to try and implement some of what I had learned.  Some major changes in my body position would need some serious seat-time and also some new braking techniques to practice.

Friday morning the bike wouldn’t start.  Actually it would start and then die right away.  Maybe the lightweight SpeedCell race battery was cold since the over-night temps were in the 40s. I suspected the Quick Shifter or the battery. By the time I figured out that my back up battery, which had shown ready on my charger at home, had a bad cell and was no good I had missed the morning practices. This made me very cranky and pressured.

As the day warmed, the Speed Cell battery proved to be fine and I got going for the afternoon sessions.  Twin cylinder bikes vibrate more than 4 cylinder machines and the Duc motor was no exception.  The harmonics of the motor vibrated under acceleration and caused the quick shifter to quickly cut the motor when I was trying to power down the straights.  It was as if someone had quickly turned the key off and on while I was riding.  This too added to my cheerful outlook, I knew it wasn’t a huge deal, but I was losing much needed practice.

We adjusted the Star Lane shifter to be less sensitive and this did help some but the problem persisted.  Saturday morning we loosened the bolt which mounts the switch on the shifter itself again hoping to eliminate the problem.  I took the Saturday Solo race as a warm up and a chance to race the 4 cylinder 1000s and it's lucky I did.  I got a good launch on the start but even as I was driving down to turn #1 I knew the shifter was out to get me making the bike all lurchy gurchy as I tried to motor with the pack.

I put my hand up for fear of being hit from behind and slid back to a few spots from last place.  I thought, “well, I’ll just practice and get some seat time" but the bike was running so poorly it couldn’t be ridden so I sped into pit lane.  I yelled at Jamie to get my stand, some tools and call for Mark Rozema of MarkBilt for help.  Mark ran up and in a few minutes had put a jumper on the poor Star Lane and I went back out for the last few laps of the race.  All worked well except me; I was flustered, un-focused and slow.

Looking at the results and lap times I was wondering why I do this at all.  I needed about 2-3 seconds a lap to be up front and it seemed rather daunting.  Jamie and I went for a bicycle ride around the track before dark and I tried to focus on what would make me faster the next day.