Separate us from third place overall in the Championship Points Standings for 2008 with three rounds remaining in the season.
And second place honestly isn’t out of reach.
The Miller Motorsports round in Utah was a spectacular four days of non stop fun. We were treated like royalty by the fans and our wonderful hosts at the Miller facility.
We had a great weekend, AHRMA is great, the crowd was huge, everybody loved the sidecars… The press day on Thursday was great, we ran tight formations around the track for the cameras and gave lots of taxi rides to the media and willing victims who talked to the media afterwards. We were interviewd by a couple different ‘hot rod/motorhead’ type shows…
The racing was intense, Miller is an amazing track. It’s our little slice of heaven for sure.
Sarah’s first race on Saturday she was scraping the paint off the ass of one of our faster rivals the entire race. And if the race had not been incorrectly checker-flagged a lap early we’d have thrown our pass on Sean on the last lap on a part of the track where we knew we had a clear advantage and pulled away to the checkers and finished 9th instead of 10th out of a 16 bike grid. But, that’s racing and it happens. Sarah and I have decided to forgo the ‘pass on the last lap’ strategy in the future and just go with ‘pass right now and stay in front of them’ in case a administrative error occours in the future.
Sunday’s race Sarah got the best launch of her life at the drop of the green, and we shot out of the box like a top fuel dragster going into turn one right with the pros. Sarah learned how to effectively powerslide the rig through corners this weekend at high speeds and held of a -very- fast competitor for nearly two laps playing some rather dirty pool with a game of high corner entry speed, late to no braking, getting sideways on the power to make us wide, and getting in his line when he thought he was going to sneak by on the inside or outside. He finally got by us on a front straight drag race on pure motor, but Sarah proved the point that she was all over him in the corners. Our very -very- fast rival came over after the race and told Sarah, “You are -definitely- getting a lot faster, girl.”
Losing that position relegated us back to 10th as we were not able to catch back up. All that drive blew Sarah’s energy reserves. There was no threat from behind and 9th was slowly walking away as we physically started to fizzle out after four days of hard practice and racing came to a boiling head in our fatigued bodies.
Another well earned 10 out of 16. And another milestone. All laps run, and none of the ‘pros’ came close to lapping Sarah at the end. At this stage in our racing life we’re to the point where we see the 1/2/3 race leaders go by us on the last lap or close to last lap. Our regular 1/2/3/4 finishers came up after the race to tell Sarah, “Where were you? You were gone girl… What bit you in the ass?”
A satisfying weekend in Utah, a good show for the crowd, an impressive professional display of high tech new gear from the SRA… And Portland PIR is this coming weekend. A new track to us, a shot at some more points, and a shot at third overall in the Championship standings.
-Mike-