David Branyon

Story by: Greg Sampson
Photos by: rxdesign.com

Round 1: Texas World Speedway
Duration: 5-Hour Endurance
Team: Fujiwara Tofu Shop
Class: Lightweight Super Bike (LSB)
Starting Grid: 52 teams (14 teams in our class, LSB)
Machine: Suzuki SV650
Riders: John Roberts, David Branyon and Greg Sampson

 

We started the weekend Friday morning with a track day at Texas World Speedway to prepare ourselves after 6 months of no racing. Since we had to split the sessions between three riders, we each ended up with only 40 minutes of seat time. It took me a little longer to get up to speed, and my best times on Friday were only 2:06 around the 2.9 mile track. John was turning 2:00 and David was also turning 2:00s. The bike was running extremely well and producing some excellent horsepower according to David, who had run the previous year with another Lightweight team on an SV. This gave us some confidence and we knew there was more speed in the bike, if we could get ourselves back into the racing mindset.

Texas World Speedway is a 2.9-mile circuit mostly built within a 2.5-mile oval near College Station, TX. The front straight is shared with the oval but, much like Daytona, turn 1 for the road course involves an abrupt transition and a fair amount of run-off, which makes for some amazing entry speeds. The fast guys, one of which I am not considered, take the entry to Turn 1 flat in 6th (about 155 or 160 on an SV) before two quick downshifts for the sweeping entry into 2, which is really just a continuation of the turn 1 left-hander. Trust me, it all makes sense when you see it, and it is all completely insane. In fact, I prefer to sacrifice my pride, along with several seconds per lap, by lifting early and allowing myself to “depucker” prior to crossing the transition. Anyway…

You sweep into turn 2 on one knee and roll hard on the throttle as you approach the apex and swiftly exit the corner onto a short stretch. The track is plenty wide and allows for quite aggressive throttle application before braking hard (I do, anyway) for the first right-hander, turn 3. You can run hard into 3 on the brakes and turn quite late, slipping the bike over for the 90 degree right which leads over Wheelie Hill and onto another short uphill stretch which takes us outside the oval.

Greg Sampson

Turn 4 is another right hand corner, somewhat uphill and again with lots of real estate at the exit. It's a fast corner but also comes complete with a sealer patch and lacks a curb, which makes for some interesting knee dragging in the dirt packed apex if you are on the correct line. Most riders actually seemed to carry their knee over this portion, I'm guessing because of some bad pavement and the fact that you don't have to drag the puck enable to be super quick through that corner. Turn 5 is a left-hand sweeper, taken low and fast with the idea of exiting high and setting up for turn 6, another left hander that has a mild bump at the entry and a good jostle mid corner if you happen to early apex. The corner is slightly banked and quite important as it leads onto a backstretch that can be vital for passing lapped traffic or sneaking a pass on some unsuspecting rival.

Turn 7 is one of my favorites on the whole track, primarily because it is extremely easy. I go into in 5th gear on the SV and, on good days, only roll off to about 75% throttle. The steeply banked corner drops in at the apex but climbs abruptly at the exit, catching the bike and all your momentum! You can feel your body get driven into the ground and then blast out of the corner, and uphill, toward turn 8 and 8A. The entry to 8 is somewhat off camber and the corner stretches downhill to the left, before a quick flick back to the right for 8A. The CMRA has installed air fence at 8a because this is also where we re-enter the oval, there's very little run-off on a fast corner and we tend to have at least a few bikes go down there every time we race. It's a great place to set-up a pass but it takes a certain amount of planning and tends to catch some people out, despite their best efforts to play it safe. Thankfully, the Air Fence Fund exists through the hard work and dedication of John Ulrich and the folks at Roadracing World.

Exiting turn 8A is downhill and leads into the Horseshoe, or turn 9. It's a tight, slow hairpin taken mid track at entry, and is followed immediately by a very important sharp left called 9A. If you screw up the exit of 9, you'll screw up the entirety of 9A and lose all your speed on the backstretch headed into the fast left-hander known as 10. For this reason, turn 9 needs to be taken with a certain amount of patience. If you roll on too early and run wide, you'll only bunged the entry to the tight left and probably lost yourself at least a few tenths at the exit, and more than a few MPH down the back stretch. But, let's assume we've gotten through there cleanly because next up is turn 10. I love turn 10. If I could take a corner home with me and play in it for a few hours, I'd take 10. Its like one of those really fun dates you had in high school where you can get away with just about anything as long as you have the guts to try it. Me? Well, I take 10 in 4th gear with only a brief lift. I'm sure I could get through there flat, but so far I've always lifted because I've never quite had the confidence to go all the way. I'm sure this contributes to my lap times, but there's always something to work on, isn't there?

Exiting 10 is a nice little straight before we drop a gear and brake hard for 11, a left hand 90 forming the first of three corners comprising the left-right-left chicane, which leads onto the front straightaway. Obviously, this is a very important set of corners and should be treated as the most important set of turns on the whole track. The exit point of Eleven is the apex of 12, which has an exit at the apex of 13. Typical chicane, though it was designed for cars so bikes can get through there with a fair amount of speed and a heap of throttle at the apex of twelve. Now we're hard in the throttle, smoothly flicking the bike left and hoping to avoid any major bumps as we transition back to the oval's obscenely long front straight.

That, from my point of view anyway, is a lap of Texas World Speedway. I'm sure I didn't do a few areas any real justice but perhaps someone will be kind enough to correct me, as this was only my third time visiting the track. From the looks of the time sheets, a fast SV gets around TWS in about 1:56.

John Roberts

Friday night we decided to mount up a set of rains in anticipation of liquid sunshine Saturday morning. Luckily, our early preparation paid off, and it never actually rained! This combined with the ponchos, extra sets of tires and every racer in the paddock being a little high-strung must have created a high pressure zone around the track and warded off any of the wet stuff, at least while we were racing. Saturday morning started off rather damp, but the clouds parted and a dry line formed quickly in practice and during the mini-sprints.

Saturday morning we prepared our pit spot and made final adjustments to the bike during practice. Not much to do aside from fabricate a heel guard, feel out a damp track and get back in the groove. We tested the refueling system (Franken-fueler) which dumps about 5 gallons of fuel into the bike in only 12 seconds or so… then changed to a new set of Pirelli Dragon Supercorsas before the green flag.

John would be starting the bike, I ran second and David took the third stint. We planned on running 2 stints of 50 minutes apiece but 3 red flags and a race shorted by 45 minutes changed our strategy and eliminated my final stint. More on that later.

John, in hindsight of his first stint on the bike: Well, no one seemed to have their heart set on doing the start so I volunteered for the job. I have been to the drag strip a few times so I had a little practice with quickly launching a bike. We started out on the left side of the seventh row since we had pre-registered and thus ended up farther forward on the grid. This made me a little nervous since two-thirds of the field was starting behind me and most of them were on faster bikes. However this is an endurance race, not a sprint race, and thus my plan was to get a decent start, not be too aggressive into turn one or the first couple of laps, let the liter bikes go by, and wait for the traffic to settle down. When the flag dropped this is exactly how it turned out. My first two or three laps were pretty slow (2:15, 2:11). However as the field started to spread out my next four laps were a little faster (2:08-2:07 range). Once I had some more room and I had identified where all of the remaining water puddles were on the track I stepped it up and ran in the 2:04 range for the next ten laps. During these later laps I got into a corner-speed and braking battle with a rider on a 600. I also spotted and got into a nice battle with another SV-650, #29. I will forego the sorted details but I will say that I was strongly motivated to pass this particular bike. We battled back and forth, I made a pass, he passed me back, then I passed again, etc. On my last pass I rode really hard and made the pass stick, turning in a 2:00 lap time.

So I was in the groove, had about 5-8 laps left before the rider change, had most of my lines and gear changes figured out, was having a GREAT time, and then BAM! Red flag. I muttered to myself as I sat up, slowed to a relative crawl, raised my hand, and headed for the pits. Since it was close to the end of my stint we decided to top off the bike with fuel and let Greg go next for the race restart. This would save us a pit stop. We had a few minutes to breathe, put the tire warmers on, top off the fuel, and assess our status. Back to you Greg.

Thanks John, he had some great battles and moved us into 5th position in our class and about 23rd or so overall before the first of 3 red flags. After the red flag we had a complete restart of the race so I had to learn quickly what I could get away with on the SV. I took it easy on my opening lap and concentrated on just assessing the riders in front of me and, of course, myself. I quickly caught a few riders and made a few passes before getting into a heated battle for position with a team in our class. We went back and forth for about 10 laps with both of us stepping up our game and laying down some good times in the 2:03 and 2:04 range. I was definitely quicker entering turn 1 and used extra entry speed to slip around the outside on several occasions, but would lose ground (and get passed) on the front straight when I had trouble getting 100% throttle due to bad hand position on the bars. I tried to remedy the problem but kept falling into old habits and never quite got my brain and elbow to change their ways. I did crack off some fast laps in the 2:03s but mostly ran 2:04 consistently while fighting for the position. It was great fun to run that hard with another rider for that many laps and we both handled traffic well. Our fight was interrupted only when being passed by the race leaders, but we quickly allowed them room to run their race before resuming our own battle. Eventually my stint ended and David took the reins with a vengeance.

A few extra years of experience and some humbling riding skills really paid off and David moved us from 5th in class to 3rd during his long 63 minutes stint! David was really hauling around TWS and managed to get himself in a nice battle with the class leader (Faltless Racing) and a 600, even though we were a lap down. Never stop fighting! Although it was punctuated by yet another red flag, David was still shaking from exhaustion at the end of his stint. He had run some impressive laps though, most in the 1:57 range, and really showed us that the bike's potential is well up there with the class leader's. John and I just need to get some more seat time to run those kinds of laps consistently. David's stint ended with a blazing fast pit stop and John took over the bike for what would end up being the final stint.

John's last run was going well but only 8 laps into it the final red flag flew and the race ended 45 minutes early as both ambulances needed to leave the track to transport injured riders. Luckily, we had maintained our 3rd place in class and were positioned 17th overall! An amazing result for a new team with two first year racers, if I must say so myself.

Special thanks to our pit crew, Gary, John and Thomas, for all their help, dry places to sleep and words of encouragement throughout the weekend! We would not have been successful without their hard work.

Result: 17th overall (52 starters)

                3rd in class (14 starters)

Best team lap: 1:57.1 (David Branyon)

Sponsors: Pirelli tires, Ferodo brakes, Silkolene Oil, Fox (shock), Racetech (forks) and Suzuki

Next Event: 5-hour endurance, May 1 at The Motorsport Ranch in Cresson, TX