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Cory West at VIR.

Posted by Staff
Friday, 24 August 2007
Page 2 of 2 I have to say that I was feeling pretty sick on the ride back down to the pits but Chuck didn’t kill me. He was upset but we had the FX race to worry about so we just kind of put the crash behind us rather quickly. I ended up qualifying 15th in that session too which was our worst of the year but not horrible by any means. So I regrouped, cleaned up, and got ready for the FX race. As soon as I lined up at my grid position on the second row, I knew I was going to be at the front in the early stages of the race. I knew I could get a really good start from where I was on the grid and I just focused on what I had to do. When the green flag dropped I got a really good jump and just waited for everyone to hit the brakes for turn one before I shut off. When the pack got down to turn one I slotted in to third, right behind Larry Pegram and Josh Hayes. I stayed in third until we made it around to the front straight and I got passed by Marty Craggill. Then I held fourth place until we made it to the front straight and Ben Attard passed me. This trend continued until about the half way mark, after all the full on Formula Xtreme bikes had gotten by me on the front straight. I ended up getting pushed back to ninth and that is where I finished. I felt like I did really well in the race though, showing everyone that I could get up in to the lead group and hang, only to get passed by bikes with more horsepower on the straights. Chuck and the team were happy and it felt really good to get another top-ten finish. Sunday morning we had to go see the officials from the AMA to get a provisional for the Supersport race. Because I wadded the Supersport bike up in qualifying and we couldn’t fix it, the AMA let us ride our FX bike in Supersport. The rules state that you can only do this twice in one season and since our FX bike is legal in Supersport, that is what we did. I was pretty confident knowing that we already had one race on that bike and knew exactly how it was going to work in Sunday’s race. The worst part about going into the Supersport race was knowing that I was going to have to make up some ground quick from a fourth row grid position. When race time came, I was concentrating mainly on my start. I knew if I could get a start as good as I did on Saturday I could get by a lot of people right away. As soon as the green flag dropped I got a good launch and went straight for the inside of the track. When we got down into turn one I squeezed up the inside of a few guys and got myself into ninth position. The first few laps were pretty crazy because there was a pretty large group of us dicing for position and sometimes the people I was riding with were all going for the same piece of track at the same time. I made a pass on Blake Young and got up to eighth and was close to three guys in front of me. Then, on about lap 7 or 8, the motorcycle kind of lost power up in the back section of the track. When I made it down to the front straight it wouldn’t pull up to redline in top gear so I knew something was wrong. I got on the brakes for turn one and started downshifting and I could hear the thing knocking pretty bad. I slowed way down and moved off of the racing line and made my way back to the pits. The motor had definitely blown up and that was the end of my Supersport race. The race ended up getting red flagged shortly after I pulled off the track but there was nothing we could do to get back into the race. I was happy that I got into a good running position but bummed at the same time that we didn’t get to finish the race. The team was happy with my performance but we all knew we had a lot of work to do before I could hit the track in Atlanta in two week’s time. So we’ll use the down time to get everything ready for the next race at Road Atlanta, and you can bet that we’ll be fired up for that one! I know I always give a thanks to everyone that helps us out, but without everyone’s help this time, I probably wouldn’t be able to race in Atlanta. So this is an extra special thanks to everyone involved in our program this year!!!! Thanks to all the Sponsors! Team Hunter, Kneedraggers.com, Yamaha Motor Corp., Pirelli, SHIFT, Premiere Home Entertainment, Double Life Corp., Graves Motorsports, VP Fuels, Vortex, Sidi, Suomy, GP Tech, DynoJet, GW Hoss, Labworks, The Trade Group, Razor’s Edge Motorsports, Sebimoto and the Fellas! Photos by Brian J Nelson You can check out the gear that Cory is wearing at www.shiftracing.com << Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>

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