Hi everyone!
The R.A.C.E. Superseries season opener took place this past weekend at Shannonville Motorsports Park near Belleville, Ontario. The weather was warm and the skies were clear and it was the perfect weekend to put my new 2007 Kahuna Kawasaki ZX-6R to the test! In a word….this bike is a ROCKETSHIP!
With some extremely special thanks to my good friend and mechanic Brad Clarke, who spent all day Friday putting the final touches on my “A” bike, I was able to get rolling on the Hindle-equipped “A” ride first thing Saturday morning. My first impressions--- this thing is a ROCKETSHIP!
The handling of the new ZX-6R is second to none with some of the most solid power delivery straight out of the box! The brakes on this machine are top notch with all the bite you need to bring all that horsepower to a slow when needed. Once I got over how much power the bike was putting out, I started to get a handle on some other great features of the bike—such as the sweetest slipper clutch I have ever used, and a very slick transmission that made shifting a dream compared to the clunky gearboxes on some of my previous race bikes. My immediate impressions--- this thing has a crazy amount of horsepower with some top notch handling to match--- I have no excuses for making my Expert season debut a great success! It’s no wonder this bike is seeing so much success in the AMA and soon no doubt on the Canadian circuit once the Parts Canada Superbike series gets rolling as well--- this bike is truly a weapon not to be taken lightly!
For the RACE Regional series opener, I was entered into three classes- 600 Sportbike (co-ed); Open Sportbike (co-ed) and Women’s Open. With the “A” bike completed and ready to roll, I spent most of Saturday morning practice getting acquainted with my primary ride for the season. I was a little late in getting aboard this machine as it had spent the better part of the last month at Hindle, where Hindle engineers worked their magic to develop a race pipe for the all new and re-designed ZX-6R. After logging some 140km on the Dyno, and adding a race pipe and kit ECU, Hindle was easily able to draw an additional 8 horsepower out of the bike--- not that the bike needed any further horsepower….it had plenty straight out of the crate!
The added horsepower was definitely taking some getting used to on Saturday morning—especially on Shannonville’s 1.8km long Nelson circuit, a small circuit that didn’t really allow for winding-out the new ZX-6R and letting this Thoroughbred of a racebike loose where it really wanted to be!
For Saturday afternoon’s qualifying sessions I still found myself getting better acquainted with my new ride and making some on the fly adjustments to the stock suspension. Thanks to Accelerated Technologies’ John Sharrard, we were able to make a few minor adjustments and the ZX-6R was starting to handle even more smoothly on the bumpy and technical Nelson circuit.
Sunday morning. Time to wake up and get my race face on!
First up was the Women’s Open race, and my debut as an Expert. The field is competitive this year and some of the Expert ladies are exceptionally fast. I got off to a reasonably good start--- not bad for my first start ever on the new ZX-6R—and managed to dice it out with a few ladies to take a 7th place finish in the Women’s Expert. While I still have a lot of work cut out for me this year, I am pleased to say that my lap times dropped significantly over last year’s performance on the Nelson circuit--- in fact, I dropped a full three seconds off my laps on the same course last year! No doubt that extra handling and horsepower is kicking in!
The Open Sportbike race was second up on the afternoon race card. While I got a great start and was well in the charge going into turn one, I managed to get tied up behind some traffic and wasn’t able to gain any ground. Frustrated that I could not make a pass, I diced back and forth throughout the race and eventually had to settle for 13th place. This result is going to change as I am certain my lap times would have put me well into the top five. Next time will be better.
The final race of the day was the 600 Sportbike race. Unfortunately the race was called after only 2 laps due to a red flag situation. It was so late in the day that I was actually pretty happy the race was called. Now this gives me another 2 weeks to work on my game and get ready to ride my new Kahuna Kawasaki ZX-6R like it wants to be ridden--- like a ROCKETSHIP!
The world’s utmost thank you to Brad Clarke for taking so much of his time to race prep the new machines and wrench on every single adjustment all weekend long. Big thanks also has to go to my husband Dave Shirley for supporting me in this crazy sport, for all my racer friends who had some many words of encouragement and advice over the weekend and to my parents to making their “annual appearance” and making sure my crew and I were well fed over the weekend!
Next race is at Shannonville on May 19-20. See you all at the races real soon!
Vicki
AM#78
