on
the A and B bikes. Both bikes worked fine, with the stumble on the A bike having
been cured, or so we thought.This weekend saw the second successful Endurance outing for Team Charm this year, and the second time the team has run two bikes at one event. With Team Charm having an intermittent motor problem, and Team Charm II having crashed, the results are a little less than what was hoped for at the team’s home track. Still, in the overall race, out of 43 entries, Team Charm and Team Charm II were 22nd and 24th. In the lightweight class the results were 8th and 9th respectively, out of 10 entries, the teams only beating Neighbor of the Beast who blew an engine. This shows how the level of the competition in the lightweight class has really improved, but we’ll get back to this in a bit, first the set up.
The week started off with some work on the A bike to solve a intermittent stumble encountered in the closing hours of the 6 hour at Grattan a month before. Steve loaded up the trailer & headed off to Brian’s house in VA. After loading up the newly acquired 2002 R1 to be worked on Sunday after the races, and more importantly, the BBQ smoker, Steve left Brian’s place to head up to Tommy Bauchiero’s farm in Woodsboro, MD. Those familiar with tale of Team Charm will recall that Tommy rode for Team Info Tech in 2002, beating Rich, Steve and Monty for the national endurance championship. Tommy is a recent recruit for Team Charm for our much anticipated 2007 return to endurance racing, but more on this in a minute. After getting Tommy’s RV, Tommy and Steve headed over to Tommy’s friends house (name?) in Hagerstown to stage for an early morning arrival at the track, which was closed for camping on Wednesday night. Wednesday evening proved to be an interesting review of current watering holes in Hagar’s-Patch. The group stayed up until 3:30 discussing exactly how fast they used to ride motorcycles, proving yet again that as the older we get, the faster we went…
Thursday morning broke damp & rainy. Steve & Tommy decide to sleep
in late & didn’t get to the track until after 10am and after a decent
breakfast. The practice day on Thursday was being organized by Roger Lyle. Steve
felt he neither needed practice at Summit Point, nor on practice on a SV650
and thus elected to not ride. Tommy on the other hand had not put a leg over
a race bike since 2002 & wanted the track time. The rain was on and off
until the early afternoon. Fortunately by 3pm a dry track had developed and
Tommy got some good track time on
the A and B bikes. Both bikes worked fine, with the stumble on the A bike having
been cured, or so we thought.
Thursday evening Steve and Tommy stayed at the track while the regular crowd
shuffled into the pits & started to set up. Steve had fun flying a RC plane
on the front straight much to a delight of Jeff Atwell’s kids. Due to
the rain caused slow start on Thursday Steve and Tommy were able to get the
pits set up very
nicely, including a satellite internet connection via Tommy’s DirectWay
satellite set up. Steve amused himself while Tommy was riding during the day
by e-mailing pictures of the pits & Tommy on the track to the other team
members who were still at work, in some cases were to work until Friday, just
to rub it in. Brave new world with such things in it.
Friday morning a high pressure system had moved in to the region bringing with it mild temperatures and dry air for the entire weekend, which was shaping up to be a grand time. Steve Clark & Jennilynne Guthridge had showed up Thursday evening but did not make it down to the pit until later in the morning. Tommy and Steve got both teams registered. Rider order was to prove problematic & was left blank. Bernie & Tommy took the bikes to tech to hurry up and wait. Stopping at Clark’s RV to get a good facial licking from Zeus & Zoie, Steve carried the helmets to tech for Bernie & Tommy. After waiting a long time in tech the team sat around for waiting some more for the first practice set. Clark left to go home to get the 6.5 gallon dump can he forgot to bring to match the 6.5 gallon SV fuel tank he did have brought to the track.
The team only registered two of its three bikes for practice, this worked out
nice because Tommy was planning on leaving in the afternoon to go home. Morning
practice had a couple of problems when the B bike had a cracked exhaust bracket.
Here is a picture of Tommy entering T1 
with
a fine exhaust. Here is a picture of Tommy with a broken exahust braket 
.
Here is a picture of Tommy looking down at the exit of one trying to figure
out what that scrapping sound 
is
coming from. The bracket was re-drilled and assembled for Tommy to make his
second practice set. Bernie on the other had was having no problems on the A
bike. During lunch Steve and Bernie mounted the 6.5 gallon fuel tank that Clark
brought. Adding this tank to the A bike meant that it would be theoretically
capable of going 2 hours between fuel fill ups. The plan was for the A bike
to run four 90 minute stints to make up the six hour race. The B bike had a
stock tank, and based on our experience from the past a stock tank was only
good for hour and 10 minutes or so at Summit Point in the ’24 average
range. Therefore we planned on doing an hour stints for the B bike.
Rich showed up Friday afternoon & spent some time with Steve taking pictures
of the action on the track. In the evolution of Team Charm we have gone from
having no pictures, to a couple of poor pictures, to a nice picture every once
in a while, to now having dozen’s of pictures to choose from.
Eventually we’ll get a high storage web site up but for now we will just
include a few.
Friday evening the weather was perfect, cool enough he air conditioners on the RV’s and trailers did not run. Brian showed up late Friday evening with his Father, Jack and two kids tow, Jake and Jess. Tommy went to bed about 8:30pm, something that perhaps the entire team should have done. The final rider roster did not hash out until 10:30 when the 6th rider called to cancel. Brian got the BBQ smoker set up to smoke the 35lbs of pork shoulder, which would be started about 5am to slow cook all day.
Saturday morning dawned cool, temps in the low 60’s with a promise of perfect weather for the races. Steve awoke early to work on the rider order for five riders on two bikes. Trying to make 8 slices of pizza from a 6 slice pie is not the easiest thing, but the rider order for Team Charm would be: Bernie, Clark, Steve and Brian. On Team Charm II it would be Tommy, Brian, Tommy, Bernie, Tommy, Clark. This netted everyone between 2.5 & 3 hours of riding except for Steve, who had a single 90 minute stint to be more available for pit stops to make sure everything went well.
After re-locating to the hot pits the team round robined the two bikes during the single ½ hour practice session. No hiccups were encountered during practice and the time set about mounting fresh rubber and brake pads for the race.
The start of the race was scheduled for 11am, but was flagged off about 15
minutes late. Bernie was gridded in the first wave, while Tommy was in the third.
Bernie got a so-so start
but Tommy got a great launch
& quickly passed Bernie. Tommy was lapping in the ’24-‘25 range
(with a team best of ’23.8) while Bernie was in the ’26-’27
range.
At about the forty minute mark Brian was watching the racing in turn 10 
&
saw Bernie come wailing in to the turn. Abruptly Bernie’s right knee slider
caught on something & was torn off. Steve, who was standing with Eric on
the pit wall, saw him climbing up on the front straight looking down at his
knee. Quickly thinking, Brian ran straight over to the pits I told Steve what
he had saw, who had just had Bernie signal he was pitting on the next lap. Theorizing
that he wanted to come in for a new knee slider, Brain tore one off his leathers
& gave it so Steve who met Bernie on the pit lane when he came in &
slapped the new slider on the Velcro of his leathers. Total time loss was about
20 seconds, 1:46 lap of the pit lap instead of 1:26.
At the hour mark the team planned for its first pit stop. Brian would be going out after Tommy came in & was getting ready. Tommy had been averaging 1:25.2 during his stint. Steve went out to the pit wall & told Eric to make sure he gave the correct bike the “PIT” signal two minutes before the scheduled stop at the hour mark. Eric indicated he got a affirmative from the rider & the team got ready for out first pit stop. About two minutes later the team looked quizzically at Bernie came into the pits. Realizing that Eric must have given the wrong bike the pit signal, the team quickly waived Bernie back out on the track, who did a 1:33 time on that lap, only loosing 6 seconds.
Once we got the correct rider in the scheduled pit stop went as planned, with
perhaps a few moments lost on the key removal. At a hour a thirty two minutes
into the race Bernie was signaled to come in for his rider change, Clark to
go out. The pit went well
,
but Bernie stated the bike was running poorly:
“Dude, the bike is running like crap. But other than that it was fun. In the infield it will cut out, a couple of time launching me up over the tank. How did you know I needed a knee slider?”
A half an hour later 202 came in for a second pit stop to put Tommy out for his second hour. The pit stop went uneventfully, but Brian advised the brake lever was coming back to the bar. This would explain why he averaged 1:28.9 during his stint. Realizing that the team now had one bike that was sputtering thru the infield and one bike that did not have good brakes, it would be a long day. As Brian said:
“The brake lever was coming back to the bar, I was having a hard time getting into one and five.”
The next round of pits stop, and the three hour mark, would involve pitting
both bikes in rapid succession. Steve suited up for his only stint on 911 while
Bernie got ready for his second stint on 202. It was decided to pit 202 first
because the stock tank had a lower reserve than 911. Tommy and Clark were having
an epic inter-team race
on the track, hooked up together running 1:25’s for some time. It would
be a shame to bring them in as the two looked like they were having so much
fun, but the necessity of fuel made it a requirement.
At the three hour mark the pits in general became a very busy place, and specifically
in Team Charm pits, due to the proximity of everyone’s pit time. 202 was
brought in first and the pit stops went off without a hitch. Tommy had averaged
’25.9 during his second stint and Clark had averaged ’26.4 for his
90 minute ride. During the second pit Clark struggled slightly getting off the
bike, his right leg giving him difficultly, and told Steve with a crazed look
in his eyes of the problems in the bike, or as Clark said;
“The bike cutting out in turn three and has a vapor lock going up into turn nine be careful.”
Steve started his first and only stint with the bike initially running fine,
and Steve cautiously getting up to speed. Unfortunately for Steve he had gotten
ahead of his hydration profile and within 10 minutes on the bike had to pee,
which makes it impossible to get behind the windscreen and causes 
distractions.
Worse yet, at about the same time, the bike began to cut off every time Steve
lifted off the seat. This made going thru the infield very challenging. Steve
was able to fix the problem in turn three by not moving in the saddle at the
exit until he got to four, when the throttle was closed momentarily to set up
for the entry, but 7,8 and 9 were real difficult to arrange without lifting
off the seat to change body positions. Between the full bladder and the bike
problems Steve was only averaging 1:28.1, almost four seconds a lap slower than
’02.
The red flag came out at the three hour fifty four minute mark due to a multiple
bike crash in T10 caused by a blown motor. Fortunately nobody was seriously
hurt. Unfortunately Bernie on the 202 bike was one of the machines involved
in the conflagration. Here you can see the bike that blew its engine
coming into T10. Here you can see a close up of the oil pouring out
of the fairings. Bernie came into the turn & got slowed down & actually
rode off the track, here you can see him heading off with the sparks from the
guy
who crashed in front of him trailing behind. Once off the track the gravel pit
sucked
him in. The cleanup took almost 40 minutes. Here Bernie is looking for a 
ham
sandwich. Finally Steve was able to go to the bathroom & it was decided
that since he only had about 53 minutes before the red flag came out that he
would restart & ride for a 45 minute stint before coming in. Tommy would
take the 202 bike out after repairs were made, but the team could not start
working on the machine until the restart. Luckily the bike was in the hot pit
right next to the pits so the team had an excellent chance to look closely at
everything and plan the repairs. All in all the team only spent about four minutes
getting the repairs completed, was re-teched by a WERA official, with Tommy
going back out on the track for his third and final stint.
During his second time out Steve was able to go a little faster, averaging
’27.3 on the machine that was breaking up thru the infield. During his
third and final ride on 202 Tommy was averaging ’27.5. The two rode until
the red flag came out again when Rachel Sasse high-sided at the exit of T5,
her second crash of the day in the same turn, and the third crash of the race
in that turn for the team, the 358 Specials. Getting off the bike Steve noted;
“That was better than my first stint. Worrying about the pit stops in
the first ½ o the race for two bikes I drank way too much water. In the
future I need to focus on my riding more if I am to ride. I cannot believe how
competitive the lightweight class has become.”
The mess took about 20 minutes to fix, meaning the race would finish in a 40
minute or so dash to the end. Neither bike had enough fuel to make the 40 minutes,
so pits stops were planned for fuel only, Brian would finish out on 911 and
Clark would finish out on 202. At the restart Clark jumped the green flag &
was meatballed on the third lap. Brian came in on the first lap after the green
flag to get a splash of fuel to run the last 40 minutes. After doing his stop
& go penalty Clark was given the pit signal with 17 minutes left in the
race to get re-fueled. The team thought about leaving him out
in the hopes there was enough fuel, but with no competition either in front
or behind there wasn’t any point to risk running out of gas.
The checkered flag came out & the team put another one in the books. The post race party and smoked pork BBQ fest was epic, with all hand agreeing that we really enjoy eating Brian's meat. The hetic pace of the weekend took its toll on the team member except Tommy who all ended up going to bed early, post 40 year old style. Oh well...:-)
Interestingly the team would have finished no worse than fifth in class had
it entered any class other that lightweight, an indication of how competitive
the class has become. Additions of new machines for the class, from different
manufactures, has also breathed life into the lightweight class. For 2007 the
team plans on contesting the entire endurance series. Thanks to all
that helped out. We will try to keep the cronicles upto date in the future.
Next event, 9/16-17/2006 at Summit Point, see you at the races!!!!!