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March 12 & 13 VIR

Update 3/20/05

By Dennys Passeto

Pictures

Hey guys, just wanted to give everyone a quick heads up on this past weekend. This was the first round of the WERA season. The weather really cooperated and we had two nice days. They were almost doomed by oversight and bad luck. On Saturday, I had trouble passing tech with my gsxr since I had forgotten to safety wire certain things. Turns out my bit were all dull and the battery on my drill was dead (and we had 30mph wind gusts). I missed both of my practices but got to go out for the last practice available with the 750 guys. Only to find out that I had an oil leak from my new left side case cover. Between putting my new tires on and fixing that, I missed my first race. I was pissed. I got the problems sorted out on the bike and went out for the Heavyweight solo race and placed 8th out of 30 some riders. It was my first race on the gsxr 600. I was kinda bummed about all the things that went wrong on Saturday but little did I know Sunday was going to be almost as bad.

Sunday morning my dad and I overslept and were rushed again. We got to the track and the back doors of the van wouldn't open. I had to unload everything out of the side door of the van with both bikes still in there. I had to take apart the door from the inside of the van to open the door. After being over an hour off schedule, I get my Ducati 998 to tech and find out I forgot to put a hose clamp on my oil filter. It took about 45 minutes to find someone in the pits that had one big enough. Once I tried to start the ducati, I found out my battery had not and would not hold a charge. I had to jump it off the van with cables before every race. I also had to be sure not to stall it or I'd be SOL. What a nightmare. I made it out to both practices but was more stressed than anything else.

Race time came and this is where it got good. I was in the zone. I started the HWT SS race on the front row. When the flag went green I got an awesome launch. Front wheel 6 inches off the ground until I had to put it down to make the bike turn in the kink. I out broke everyone into T1 including half of the expert grid. What an awesome feeling. I never even looked behind me and raced as if someone was on my ass the whole way. When I got the checkered flag, second place was 10 seconds back. I crushed them. How quickly you forget all the stress you went through to get there.

I When HWT SB came around I didn't get as good of a start. I wheelied too much off the line and had to roll off twice to put the front wheel down. I was in 3rd going into T1 and I wanted to be 1st. I waited until the other two guys braked for me to brake and I went into first going into T1 (it's so nice to finally have tire warmers). I never looked back. The race was red flagged in the 4th or 5th lap. I was in first by over 8 seconds and took the win again.

These were my first two race wins in WERA and I must say that their trophies are cool. Their second place plaques suck. Well, second place sucks anyway. I've got some great points going into the second round at Summit Point on April 16th. I hope to get several wins this year and challenge for a championship.