So, it’s clearly been a while since I’ve posted. This year did not exactly go as I planned. January was all smiles as I attended the AFM Banquet with my wife, where I was honored to be crowned 2023 Lightweight Superbike Expert Champion in my first year racing as an expert. That was an achievement I could not have imagined at the start of 2023! At the same time I was welcoming home an upgraded race bike after turning my FZ-07 over to the hands of Bryce Prince and his shop at Kern County Power Powersports.

I debuted the impressive 92 horsepower twin cylinder engine at Buttonwillow in March for the second round of CRA. In my very first practice session I glanced down at my lap timer and saw I was running 1:59s which put my jaw on the floor. My previous best at Buttonwillow was 2:02, and to be shattering that time by 3 seconds in my VERY FIRST PRACTICE SESSION was almost incomprehensible. When I saw that number, I decided I had to push a little for my last hot lap to do a 1:58, and I did just that! My new engine (along with probably some rider improvement as well) had seemingly handed me 4 seconds like a gift from the gods. And, realistically, it had to be more than that, because if I was running 1:58 in my very first Friday practice session, it seemed like hitting 1:55 by the time I got down to race pace would be a breeze.

Sadly, I never got a chance to find out. Saturday morning found an unexpectedly wet track after some surprise overnight rain. By the time the track dried, there was no time for practice and we went straight into qualifying. I wasn’t sure how much grip to expect but was riding high on the confidence from Friday practice. I made a bit of an error in arriving last to the pit-out for the start of qualifying and quickly realized it would hold me back to be stuck riding through the pack when I had pace on just about everyone. I made a strategic call to ride through the hot pit at the end of the first lap to try and leave myself a gap for a decent qualifying lap. It was hard to leave myself enough of a gap, though, and I was catching the back markers by Riverside. This time I put my head down and figured all I could do was start working my way through the field and hope for a decent lap time.

The quest didn’t last long, though. I made a pass around the outside of Riverside, and before I could even make the next turn my bike spontaneously and inexplicably hit the ground. From the video, the only thing that’s clear is I didn’t make any mistakes. I have found no hint of a wet or oily patch on the ground. I did, however, find after the wreck that my steering was stuck due to a broken steering damper that wedged itself into a position that became a steering stop. This damper has actually broken before, and I thought I fixed it. My suspicion is the damper broke before the crash and actually caused it by locking the steering.

In any case, I came away with a modest concussion and a broken collarbone. The ER initially told me to do nothing about the collarbone. My ortho doc disagreed and recommended surgery, but the initial ER diagnosis caused a three week delay before I finally got surgery in April. That delay was the difference between making and missing the AFM double round in May that effectively torpedo’d my whole season.

Onward!