Sheldon Nelson CRA #885, 4/30/04-5/2/04, BIR Wow, what a weekend! Who knew drugs like this are legal. Got my racer license on Friday without incident…ok, well I ran out of gas about 2 laps into the race but that doesn’t count. I’m blaming it on Karl for tying off the reserve tank. On second thought, maybe I should blame the current owner for being too lazy to tie the reserve and main lines together. I ran one race on Sat. (ULSS) and two races on Sun. (ULSB and Sportsman). Race one went pretty well, the experienced lead pack was gone pretty quickly and I ended up behind another newbie (#106) for a few laps waiting for a good opportunity to pass. He went off the outside of Turn 6 and I saw air under his rear tires when he went over the rumble strips. On the next lap I was planted behind him in Turn 9 and he went a little wide, eventually off the track and ended up going down. Luckily he was ok and I ended up with a 6th place finish and a best lap of 2:19. Sat. night consisted of sitting in the hot tub at the hotel, drinking probably 1 too many Jack Daniels and cokes, and flirting with a very hot looking girl in the hot tub for about an hour – unfortunately she was married… Sun. was a little bit warmer and my first race was the Sportsmen class with a bunch of GS’s, SV’s and a few RC51’s. Not quite as much excitement in this race, I was pretty much by myself most of the race, but it was good to have a clean track to work on my lines. My best lap ended up at about 2:15, and another 6th place, so that felt good. Last race of the day for me was ULSuperbike. I got a really good start from row 3 and was pulling the guys in the front row (damn this is a fast bike Karl!) until we started coming into Turn 1 and everyone found a partner to draft except me. Didn’t realize you could go 4 wide through 1, but it’s definitely possible. After the 1st lap the front runners were long gone and I was left to race by myself for a few laps. With about 3 laps to go another orange shirt passes me on the straight. What the hell is that thing, a motocross bike? Oh yeah, motards are legal in this class. Turns out to be a Honda XR650 that definitely has the horsepower advantage. We end up swapping places back and forth. He would pass me coming out of 10, I would pull in behind him and draft then pass him on the outside of 1. We did this for about 2 laps until he finally was too far back to pass on the straight. Another race, no crashes, and you guessed it – a 6th place finish with a 2:16 best lap. All in all I had a great weekend, the bike worked extremely well – knock on wood, and I was pretty happy with my lap times. I’ve obviously got a long way to go to get down to the 2:06-2:08 range that Karl was running on this bike last year, but I’ve got 3 more weekends at BIR to whittle that down. Next race: MAM 5/22-5/23 -Sheldon Copyright TeamPoop 2003