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photo by Phil Kopp
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imBroglio Racing Does the 2003 Superbike Shootout!imBroglio Racing places 7th in Middleweight and 13th overall in the Superbike Shootout—an 8 hour endurance race held at Spokane Raceway Park on September 28th, 2003. The team members included Jim Broglio (team captain), Joan Herwick, Jim Engel and JD Madlin. The bike was a Honda CBR600F3. THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:
imBroglio Racing Endurance Race ReportJim Broglio (team captain) Before I begin I would like to thank all the folks that made this weekend possible. Along with our sponsors, I thank Dave Preston and Matthew Harlow, Mel from the Restoration Center, Dave Barnhardt for fuel and support. Les Criess: Crew Chief and signal man, Tim Keane: Pit support and assistance, The raceday crew and corner workers: once again a terrific race day, THANX!! To Tom Marx and the Some Clowns race team For the very timely loan of a rivet style masterlink after we spit the clip off of our chain! What a strange trip it was.. The first time the bike was ridden by any of the team was on the Wednesday prior at a track day, this was our only chance to sort things out before the race weekend. Fortunately the tuning done by Joan proved to be perfect, the suspension worked well, and the bike was ready! Saturday, the day before the race was the first time the whole team was together to discuss strategies and dial in the bike, with rider weights covering a spread of about 100# getting the suspension figured out was our first priority, so the fat guys got a nice loose suspension while the petite got a pretty harsh ride. Once again everything worked out quite well, the suspension was compliant enough for all members to be reasonably happy with the results. We decided to run 45 minutes at a time, this would be well within the fuel range, long enough to learn the track and get comfy about it, yet short enough that we wouldn't get tired and crash. Saturday practice was also qualifying for grid position, we ended up right where we figured, running between 1:45 - 1:47, this got a us gridded in 7th place. The practice sessions went well and ended with the team quite happy and ready to race. The only issue found was a missing master-link clip! Joan procured a new chain but unfortunately it also had the clip style link, so we spooged it well and safety wired it also. This would later become a minor issue. Sunday morning we took full advantage of the morning practice session to make sure that everything was in place. I (Jim Broglio) started the race, we had decent grid position and we were about to find out that for an old F3 we had pretty good motor on the rest of the field, going into T2 we were the first middleweight bike in the corner! It suddenly occurred to us that we may actually have a chance to place reasonably well!! I ran my 45 minutes running between 1:41-1:43, faster than we had anticipated! Still felt fine with energy to spare after my 1st stint, thinking that the 45 minute intervals would work well. Gave the bike a quick once-over, topped off the tank and handed off to Jim Engel. On his second lap he tossed it down in T9!!! We heard the announcement over the PA that #126 had crashed, looked over to see the cloud of dust in T9. Then we saw the Red flag! Found Jim being attended to by the ambulance crew, he wasn't smiling much. I took the bike from the corner worker and proceeded to have my OWN issues, the bike was on fire! Actually it wasn't, the exhaust pipe had loaded up with fuel and that's what was burning, but it was shooting out the pipe quite nicely and from a distance the bike DID appear to be on fire, about that time 4 people showed up with fire extinguishers to assist. I convinced everyone that it was OK and managed to get the bike started and the flames blown out. Once I confirmed that Jim was indeed headed for the hospital I rode the bike to our pit so we could assess the damage.Jim did it right, minimal damage to the bike (we did dump about 15# of dirt out of the lower) and he threw the Red flag so we didn't lose any laps!! We had the bike ready for the grid when they restarted the race! JD took the reigns and did solid laps, running 1:41-1:43, no issues with the bike and no crashes! He did his 45 minutes and handed off to Joan. Joan threw down and pulled the teams fast lap of 1:40, she was looking good and racing hard, she got into a great 6 lap battle with Moon on one of the Buells before she finally motored away (something must have shaken loose on the Buell, ;-)) After her stint, Joan reported that the rear tire was beginning to squirm around so we decided that we would change the rear after my next stint, we knew we weren't gonna be blazing fast about changing the wheel but we didn't expect what we found! When I came in Tim attempted to slide the rear-stand under the bike and we discovered that the spool button was missing!! A quick re-configuration of the rear-stand and we were on course again, a new slick was mounted and JD sent out for an uneventful stint, still running between 1:41-1:43. After JD's stint we gave the bike the standard once-over between riders when Joan noticed that the master-link clip was MISSING!! And we didn't have a spare! Tom Marx from 'Some Clowns Racing' came to the rescue with a very nice rivet style master link! We were SAVED!!! Nobody had complained about the front tire at all, but we decided to change it out before it became an issue. The front wheel swap went smoothly (except me burning my pinky! Rotors are HOT) The remainder of the race was basically uneventful, the bike ran great! Everyone continued to run fast and smooth, Tim Keane and Les Creiss did a fantastic job of keeping things running smoothly until the end of Joan' last stint! She signaled that she wanted to come in early, so we prepared the pit for just about anything we could think of; she came into the pits and as soon as she was in ear shot she started yelling for us to catch the bike! We caught the bike and waited for Joan to climb off, she couldn't move! She had managed to pop her knee out and get over-heated, so Tim and JD carried her off the bike and over the wall. Mass kudos to Joan though, even in some good pain her lap times didn't suffer! I went out for the last stint, ran an uneventful race to the end and overall just had FUN! The official results have not been posted yet but I believe we placed 6th in class against some serious competition. Not bad at all!!
It was a LONG day, about the 6 hour mark we were all feeling the pressure but nobody complained or gave less than 110%.
I already have the next team picked out.
Terrific job by Les Creiss and Tim Keane keeping everything running smoothly. Perfect strategizing by Jim in getting the red flag thrown for your crash so we didn't lose any laps! Thanx to EVERYONE that made this possible! | ||
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