AFM RACE REPORTS - John Proctor

John Proctor
AFM/WERA #218

AFM Round 1 at Buttonwillow

26 March 2008

The racing season has finally started and all the hard work that has gone into getting ready paid off this weekend at the AFM Round 1 races at Buttonwillow. Since I spent the last two years on a GSXR-750 I knew switching to the new CRB600RR was going to be a real challenge for me this season.

Looking back on the last three months I feel lucky to be working with the CRST team not only because of the huge amount of knowledge the entire crew has about suspension and bike handling, but because every member of the team contributes in a significant way. Tige worked really hard to help get me the right Elka shock with the right spring and to give me some initial set-up advice that worked straight away. Jim did an amazing job revalving these forks and they too worked straight away. In the past it has taken other folks several tries to get valving in place that I like and felt comfortable on. Jim got it right the first time and that was huge in terms of boosting my confidence on the track. When I finally got to test everything at Laguna in January, Dave worked with me on fine-tuning the set-up for the Pirelli tires I'm running. He also worked with me on footpeg placement to really help me work with the set-up. By the end of the first test, I could tell I was going to love this new bike. At our second test, the bike was having some issues finishing a corner, but again, Dave helped me sort that out through some geometry changes and some damping adjustments in the rear. As a scientist in my day job, it is nice to work with someone that knows how to convert what you feel on the track into numbers and data that you can record and study off-track.

By this point Dave and I had created an "adjustment map" of where the bike works so we know how to make changes when we need to. Because of that, by the race weekend, I was totally at home on this bike and my lap time progression showed it. In the 600 Superbike class, my first race, I got down to 2:08.5 lap times. In the Formula 1 race, I again was consistently running 2:08.5. The bike was working fine but in looking at my preload marker on the forks I could tell I needed to add some preload and Dave agreed. I made the preload adjustment on the forks and gridded up for my last race, the 600 Production race. Straight away, I knew I was going faster. The extra preload allowed me to brake a little later and harder. In fact, I was running 2:05's with 2:05.1 being my fastest, a full 5 seconds faster than my practice time. This was really exciting for me. I feel like I have a great platform now that I can really go out with confidence and start pushing the lap times down. I'm glad the CRST team will be with me as I do just that!