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Team Latus Motors Racing Flat Track Racing Lake Odessa, Michigan 1/2 mile, AMA Twins Grand National
Team Latus Motors Racing Flat Track Racing Lake Odessa, Michigan 1/2 mile, AMA Twins Grand National| Lake Odessa, Michigan 1/2 mile, AMA Twins Grand National |
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| Team Latus Racing - Flat Track Racing | |
| Written by Joe Kopp | |
| Wednesday, 05 July 2006 00:00 | |
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Here we were at another halfmile on the big bikes, Lake Odessa Michigan. Last year I had a comfortable lead and blew a motor with 5 laps to go, so I was really looking forward to this race this year for a little redemption you might say. Practice went pretty good for me, and everything was feeling pretty dang good on the Team Latus H-D www.latus-hd.com bikes. I have always really liked this track, because the only wall it has is down the front straight away on the outside, the rest of the track is surrounded by corn and soy bean fields. That will always let ya charge a corner a little harder than a cement wall lookin' at ya will. The track had turned out to be pretty fast today, but it was a real narrow groove, which was going to make passing very hard I could tell. In my heat race I had Mike Hacker, Bryan Smith and others. Hacker and I were side by side going into turn one, but he was underneath me, so I had to give him the spot for now. Lap after lap I pushed on Hacker to try and find a way by him. I could really gain on him in turn three and four, but there was just no room to pass. For the first few laps, we had gotten away from Smith, but after the halfway point, Smith had caught up to us pretty close. I still had a few bike lengths on Smith and I knew that I had to try and get around Hacker. So I kept working the outside of Hacker in both turns, as he was just hugging the bottom of the groove. With two laps to go, I tried to roll around the outside of Hacker in turn three, but I got my back tire in some drier dirt and spun it sideways just enough that it caused me to loose a little drive down the front stretch going to the white flag. This allowed Smith to inch past me going into turn one, and he held the spot until the finish. So Hacker won it with myself in third. This would put me on the second row for the final, which is not what I wanted at all, but I knew that we were fast enough to win that race, it just didn't happen I guess you could say. So onto the final we go! Last year the track crew watered the track pretty good right before the final, which made for an awesome race track, so this year they went out and put some water on it again right before the final, but not near as much as last year. They gave us one warm up lap before the start, and I could tell right away that there was not enough water to do any good up top. The race was going to be around the skinny little groove. At the start of the final, I spun it up a little bit, but it looked like alot of guys were spinning on this start. I came out of turn two probably in the top ten, but on the exit of turn two, I was on the low side of the groove, and I got a great drive down the back stretch. We were three wide going into turn three. I pushed it in there pretty hard, and the next thing I know is that I am trying to avoid hitting Nicky Cummings left # plate/exhaust pipes with my front wheel. As soon as it let go of my front wheel, I got sent into a huge high-side off my bike. OUCH! This hurt BAD! The race was red flagged so that the paramedics could tend to me. I wasn't knocked out, but my body took a big thumpin'. I ended up getting taken to the nearest hospital as my right hip was really hurting me and they wanted to xray it and see what was up. After a full head to toe cat scan of myself, and lots of pokes and needles, they released me from the hospital around 4:00am that morning. No broken bones or anything, just some bruises and such. It is now Wednesday afternoon and my body is still sore in spots, and better in others, but all in all I really am doing pretty good considering the hard crash I had. Coolbeth ended up winning the race, with JR Schnabel in second and Carr in third. So really the points did not hurt me too bad, as we have lots of racing left and I know what I have to do now. Put the head down and GO! Our next race is this saturday in Mineral Wells, West Virginia, and it is a 1/2 mile. So until next time. G'day! Joe |
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| Last Updated ( Thursday, 05 June 2008 21:42 ) | |