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Cory West - Round 6 race report

Posted by Kenn Stamp
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
AMA ROADRACING REPORT – CORY WEST Privateer roadracer Cory West gives you the inside scoop from Round 6 of the AMA Supersport and Formula Xtreme Championships at Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, UT. By Cory West After my race at Road America I had a weekend off and then we all went to Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, Utah. SHIFT did a small update in the news about the WERA National that was the weekend before the AMA races and things went well for us. I took pole position and the race win in the C Superstock race and we got a good setup on the motorcycle for the AMA weekend. Because I had the weekend of riding before the AMA races started, we skipped the promoter practice on Thursday and just got everything dialed in for Friday’s first official practices. Both Supersport and FX practices went well and we were sitting inside the top 10 and only a second to a second and a half off of the fast time. We sorted through some different tires in both of those sessions and found our race tires and what worked and what didn’t. At the end of the day I had to qualify for FX, and that turned out to be very good for us. I started the qualifying session on what would be our race tire and never changed. I just turned in as many laps as I could and managed to get hooked up with a few guys at the end and turned in the sixth ^{fastest time at 1:54.5. That was the first time I was in the 54’s and I felt very confident in our tire selection and motorcycle’s performance.} Saturday we started off with Supersport practice and we were kind of struggling just a bit in that class. The bike was running good on top end power but I was having a hard time getting it to pull very hard coming out of the corners. I complained a little bit to Chuck and he took the bike to the dyno to see if he could find some more power. Next session out was on the FX bike and I was struggling to get back to where I left off in Friday’s qualifying session. I came in and made a quick change to the tire pressures and went back out and started turning faster laps but I ended up tucking the front in turn 11 and crashed. It was just a little lowside and it really didn’t do much to the bike or myself, it just caught me off guard and happened super fast. So after we got the bike and myself cleaned up, I had to go out and qualify for Supersport. We had a race tire to start the session on and then we had two qualifying tires to throw on at the end to try to bring our time down. The session was going well on the race tire but when we started throwing the super sticky tires at it, the bike just didn’t work as well. I ended up going faster on the race tire and I really should have just stayed on it the whole time, but it was a gamble worth trying. So I ended the session in twelth position, which is not really where I wanted to be, but I knew we had a good chance of hanging with the lead group for the race on Sunday. While Chuck and I were out qualifying for Supersport, our newest member to Team Hunter, Cyle Winkler, was in the garage getting our FX bike ready to roll for the race at the end of the day. The bike got all cleaned and fixed up about a half hour before the race started and I just made sure everything felt the way it did before my little spill. When the race got underway, I got a good launch off of the line but as soon as I clicked the bike into second gear everybody behind me started blowing by. I couldn’t figure out why, but I just rode as hard as I could to maintain my position. I ended up getting stuck in ninth place with nobody around and that’s where I finished. When the Supersport bike got mapped at the dyno earlier in the morning, we used the same map in the FX bike and it hurt the bike’s power a little bit. Just enough that I couldn’t turn the same times I did in qualifying but we still finished the race in the top ten. On Sunday, we got everything sorted out that we were having problems with the day before and I got down to some high 54's in the Supersport warm-up. I knew that I would have to get a good start in the race to try and hang with the leaders. That's what I did. I got into Turn 1 good and worked my way up to around 6th by the time I got to Turn 5. When I tipped into Turn 6, I felt my seat start to move around a little bit, but I tried to ignore it and hang on to the position I was in. I got shuffled around a little bit and was around 8th place when my seat actually came flying off in a section of "S" turns. It happened on the third lap of a 13 lap race and I knew the next 10 laps would be interesting After it fell off, I was left to sit on the battery and subframe, which wasn't too bad except for the two 10mm bolt heads that held the tailpiece onto the subframe. I got passed by a few more guys and I tried my best to stay with them but my legs were cramping so bad from sitting 6 inches lower than what I was used to. When the race finally ended, I finished it out in eleventh place. It was probably the most physically and mentally straining race I’ve had in a long time, but I got through it better than a lot of people did that actually had something to sit on! It turned out to be the spring that holds the Dzeus fastener that broke. There are two fasteners that hold the seat on, and when the one broke, the other couldn’t hold all the force of me sliding around on the seat. It was a bummer that it happened in the race but at least I finished and got some more points. It was a long and hot two weeks spent at Miller, but I really had a good time riding at that place. We had some good luck the first week, and some bad luck the second week but that’s how racing goes sometimes. I’m on the road now for a WERA National at Road Atlanta. It’s a lot of traveling but I couldn’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing! Thanks to all the sponsors and my hard working mechanics, Fat Chuck and Big Wink! Team Hunter, Yamaha Motor Corp., Kneedraggers.com, Pirelli, SHIFT Racing, Graves, Double Life Corp., Premiere Home Audio, Suomy, VP Racing Fuels, Sidi, Vesrah, DynoJet, G.W. Hoss, Labworks, Razor’s Edge Motorsports, and the Fellas! From Shift Racing www.shiftracing.com (photos by Brian J Nelson)

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