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April 16 & 17 - Second Round of WERA Season

Summit Point Raceway

By Dennys Passeto

Pictures

Hey guys, I'm sitting here in pain getting ready to go back to ordinary life. I did so much practicing and racing in the last week that I think I forgot how much it sucks to work.

After doing two days of practice at VIR on Monday and Tuesday, I thought I was going to be way ahead of the game for the races this past weekend. I also did another practice day at Summit on Friday to get re-familiarized with the track. All was going well until some jackass took me out going into T5 in the last session of the day. Did I mention it was on the cool down lap! The guy crashed trying to dive under me into the turn and by the time I saw his bike sliding across my path, I couldn't avoid him. I must've come down very hard on my elbow which then (I think) pushed my shoulder out of socket and it went back in immediately. Of course this hurt like a bitch. Luckily this happened on the GSXR and so I retired it for the weekend and focused on the races with the Ducati. I just went to the doctor and he confirmed that my shoulder did start to come out but didn't all the way. I've got some serious bruising on my elbow.

The whole weekend was in limbo. I didn't know if I would be able to race. A lot of Ibuprofen and a lot of ice later I mounted the bike for morning practice and I felt okay enough to ride. My confidence was a bit shaken so it took me a while to get back up to race pace. I did the solo race on Saturday for extra seat time and I ended up dipping into the 1:23's. I started in 29th and finished in 14th. It would've been 11th but the race got red flagged in the 11th lap and they sent us out again for 4 laps and I had to repass all the people I'd passed in the 11 laps. I managed to pass 15 of them in 4 laps. I was happy enough with that. Mike Fleet showed up and really helped in the pits getting the bike ready along with my dad.

Sunday I made it out for both practices with a little less pain but nowhere near 100% and I managed to dip into the mid 1:22's. I was very happy to get to where I left off last year. For HWT SS race I started on pole and led every lap of the race to take the victory. I won by about 15 seconds from second place. After several red flags and medivac called in, they finally got to our HWT SB race. I guess some guys really had some superbikes because they were fast. I had some serious competition in this race so I had to have my "A" game on. A guy on a beastly RC51 kept showing me a wheel at T1 and I had to pick up the pace. I led him the whole race even though I made some mistakes in the last two laps and I managed to beat him by 1.205 seconds. It was a close one but I liked that I had to work really hard to earn it. I used all the slow expert riders to block him. I had to really strategize and it worked. I was very pleased.

I'll let the others talk about how they did.

I'm currently first in points for both HWT SS and HWT SB. Next round is Cyclejam at VIR which is worth double points but it's probably a much bigger field.