Barber (epilogue)
To say things didn’t go to plan on Sunday would be an understatement of epic proportions.
The morning warm-up was the only thing executed according to plan. Carson tried an update to the set-up in this session, but it didn’t deliver, so it was backed out for the race.
the calm before the storm, getting ready for the morning warm-up
At about the 10-minute warning, Travis went to warm up the bike, but it didn’t kick over after a few seconds on the starter. Concerned, Travis started looking for a pulse in the fuel pump but didn’t hear it kick on when they turned on the bike. We started furiously pulling panels off, checking wiring connections but nothing was causing it to work. It had just decided that it wasn’t feeling it today. Continuing to check connections was just getting us deeper into the bike and time was quickly ticking down. With about zero seconds remaining, Travis found something that worked, touched the starter and the bike was running!
At this time, the grid had already gone out for their sighting lap and was about to leave for the warm-up. We were hoping we could get him down there to participate in the warm-up, but we would be happy if they’d let him start from the pit lane. Carson motored down there and was able to wait at the end of the pit lane but wasn’t allowed to take his place on the grid. An excellent performance so far this weekend was about to go unrewarded.
Because of the mad dash to get him on the track, we could not see the start, but we knew he went into turn 1 in dead last. Carson was fired up, though. By the end of lap 1, he had gone from 22nd to 17th, lap 2 had him up to 12th, and by lap 3, he was in sight of the top ten, a few seconds behind Ryan Barbour but catching him rapidly. Isaac Woodworth crashed out of the lead in turn 5 on lap 3, promoting Carson to 11th. Trenton Keesee did us a solid and slid out unharmed on lap 4, promoting Carson to 10th.
Bikes on track at the penultimate turn
At this stage of the race, Ryan was about 6 seconds behind Ella Dreher and the front group of 9 riders and losing time, so for Carson to move up beyond 10th was going to require a miracle. Carson was still charging hard, smashing in consistently low 1:39 lap times as he reeled in Ryan Barbour. On lap 6 of 11, Carson blitzed past Ryan and headed off into the sunset to try to catch Jayden Fernandez, who was 6 seconds up the road running a lonely 8th after Ella Dreher had passed him and left him for dead.
On lap 7, something clicked for Ryan, and he started getting racy with Carson, dropping over a second per lap to try and stick with him. Ryan went up the inside of Carson a few times going into turn 5, but each time Carson would just watch him come by and then drive out of the corner in front, retaining the position. Outside of those few challenges in turn 5, Ryan didn’t mount a serious challenge to the position, averaging 1-2 tenths of a second slower each lap.
Carson took a challenging situation from race 2 and turned it into about the best outcome we could have hoped for, but it was truly a bummer, given his pace all weekend. We still believe he would have stuck with the lead pack for the whole race without those gremlins.
This is the second time we’ve encountered this fuel pump issue in two events, and we need to contact TNT because, apparently, we also know drama.
Here’s a link to the highlights from the event
more sculptures from around the track