Keigwins@TheTrack Day at Laguna Seca - March 5, 2002

by dgrace

Pretty good day at Laguna yesterday.

Laguna's currently rebuilding the hot pit lane, so we entered the track at turn 11 and exited to the left after Rainey corner. Also meant we pitted over on the wall bordering 10-11.

Weather was gorgeous - sunny and clear in the morning, a little hazy in the afternoon, temps in the 60's and 70's. Perfect riding weather.

Andy Carman, John Hughes, his buddy Michael and myself spent a good portion of the day goofing around together. Honestly, until the later sessions of the day, a lot of the track time sucked. 2 of the A sessions got cut short due to black flags, just when it seemed like we were getting up to speed. There also seemed to be more troublesome traffic than my last Keigwin day, though it may have been because the speeds in the group were more closely spaced. There were a few guys in the A section who were on a whole different level of pace (Mike Raab) and were flying around the track.

After lunch I mounted Jimil's helmet camera inside one of my F2's front air ducts, shooting forward. Duct tape is magical stuff for such purposes. Ran the cabling back along the fairing and under the seat, up to the tail section where I mounted the battery. Then a short length of cable up into my backpack containing the camcorder. Worked like a charm - I got some really excellent video of 1:46 laps, including really nice shots of the guy in front of me with sparkies on his pucks. The only downside was the battery life on the camcorder - and since we were pitting in the weird spot with no electricity, I couldn't charge it up between sessions. But I did get about 35 minutes of good video.

The CanyonStrafer fast guy award goes to Mr. John Hughes! Carman was a little hamstrung by a new and unfamiliar set of Michelins and was mired in the 1:42 range, and Hughes snuck by him and ripped off a 1:41 flat! I trailed behind with a still respectable 1:43.02. All of these were in the second-to-last session of the day, when some of the traffic had thinned out.

All in all a good day, but with the noise restrictions and session limitations, I enjoy Thunderhill more. Looking forward to getting back out there next week.

dave

The sun rises over the Laguna paddock Unloading the toys More toys

Even more toys Even eevn more toys Lance's rig

Yet more toys Tech inspection The 'Strafer contingent

Andy and Cocoa Lance, Linda and Art Mr. Hughes' well-worn D208...

...and what he did with it dgrace's knackered Michelin... ...and his result

Mr. Hughes Mr. Carman The load-out at the end of the day