A friend sent me this photo today, it’s the grid sheet for the last AMA 250 GP race at Daytona, 2003. Yes, that’s me on the front row, just ahead of winner Rich Oliver. I had forgotten. So I pulled my notes from the race weekend, Q was rained out so the grid was based on points from the ‘02 season.
You have all heard me tell you to write it down. I have 10 pages of rider notes, 4 pages of bike notes and 16 pages of data from AMA Pro for that weekend.
You have all also heard me say that consistency matters more then your fastest lap time. Here are my lap times from the race, supplied by AMA Pro starting with lap two: 2:00.825, 00.550, 00.544, 00.772, 01.067, 00.786, 00.901, 00.366, 01.430, 01.293, 01.662, 01.833, 01.629, 00.532
That’s a spread of 1.467 seconds over 15 laps with a max difference from one lap to the next of 6 tenths. I’m not happy about that big difference, I’ll bet I had a good draft, then a poor draft.
My race notes say I lead into turn one, held 4th for a few laps, fought with Jeff Wood, Wood lost a silencer in the Chicane and pulled off, Colin Jensen went by on his crazy fast Aprillia, Perry Melneciuc caught up to me with two laps to go, I made a great pass on three back markers into T-6 and pulled a gap (the pass was on TV), Perry was right in my draft out the International Horseshoe on the last lap and I knew I had won. Crossed the line 0.015 seconds in front for 5th.
$1,550 from the $25,00 purse, $100 from Shoei, $100 from Galindo, $25 from VP. 50 guys showed up to race, 49 started, 48 finished.
My sponsors were: Bridgestone, Speed-Tune, Silkolene, EBC, Shoei, Barnett, RK, Air-Tech, Gericke, Oxstar, Held, Zero Gravity, Roadracing World, FMF and Lindemann Engineering.