Team Barker O’Donoghue- Chuck Sorensen Race Report Round 4 Thunderhill
As some of you may know Crispin Barker my good friend and team principal runs this racing program with me. I asked him to help with this race report for a different, but close account of how our weekend went, he over delivered and I only have a few words to add. Thanks Crispy. I will put “ Chuck said” on all my quotes in this report. Everything else you read will be Crispin’s view.
Chuck Said:
We headed to Thill early Friday morning to do the Z2 Trackdays event on Friday. They are one of my sponsors. Thank you. We quickly got up to speed in afternoon practice and I think we got with in .3 of times from the last race. The main point of focus with bike set up has been the suspension, specifically front springs, and obtaining front “feel”.
F40 middleweight Saturday
As i recall we were gridded 2nd .
Flag dropped, bikes rolled away , our machine didn’t make the greatest start , still trying to figure out the launch program and a long first gear.
Cory Call from the fourth row i believe , just flat out went around the outside of every one , and charged off on his 750. Game set and match
Bless him
Meanwhile we had gotten over the rise towards turn two in 5th position and it was game on .
Berto Wooldridge, Tom ‘the bomb’ Montano , the inimitable Stephen Rue and our Chuckie on his fresh looking number 90.
What followed was a really great race with a four bike freight train.
Chuckie got up to the front of the pack for a while and actually put some space in , maybe 2 seconds, but for one reason and another
the group closed up in the final laps and the guys were really tussling for position .
Berto was at the front and was starting to get away as i recall .
Great entertainment , culminating in these four catching and mixing with another four lappers right at the first apex of turn 14 on the last lap!
It was a free for all. A melee. Great stuff!
In that instant it was fun watching the guys all like ‘WTF !’ and trying to make the best of it . We burst out laughing watching. Brilliant action !
As it happened, Rue was more bullish in the melee and had the advantage of being 3rd in our group going into the turn i believe, and saw it unfolding, kept his nerve and speed , and just in that 16th of a second of foresight, he was able to close right up behind Chuckie at the exit .
Darn it ! and ya he completed to cross the line for third and beat us by 1/10th of a second. But it was a hella fun race .
4th place for us.
Chuck Said :
This was a super fun race, it looked early on I would be on the podium, the competition got around the lappers better than I did and closed it up on the ending laps. I felt I rode hard and it was fun mixing it up with my friends. At this point we had gone softer again on the front springs and now the bike is in a “happy place” with its attitude both going into corners, mid corner and exit. We saw faster times in this race and felt we would go 1/3rd back stiffer on springs and try pushing a bit harder.
Open GP Sunday.
After the initial tear away, as i recall Chuck was maybe 6th or 5th . About a lap in , Chuck made some gains and set of like a man on a mission,
Catching and then passing Kevin Murphy. Murphy chased hard for a couple laps on his 1000, but then Chuck just kept puling away.
I was stoked to see our bike charging so hard. He was really bending it in and not letting off in turns 6 to 9.
The one liter bikes didn’t make much of a dent in our position at that point . It was very encouraging .
We know that a well sorted 600 is viable in most classes. and thats what we intend to do with ours.
T-Hill is the toughest because it is a motor track. But when we can corner with out letting off , we have a race .
For me personally , this 4th place in Open GP at T-hill was one of the most satisfying of our results this year .
Rock on Chuckie!
Chuck said:
This was personally a very satisfying race for me. Sometimes when you race lighter weight bikes with open bikes it can be frustrating, they pass you on the straights and you catch them in the corners. Racing against big bikes you have to think about your strengths, where you have the advantage on them and then, after passing them how am I going to gap them so as not to get passed on the next lap. It was a very emotional cool down lap. I thought about the challenges I have had in the past 10 years and all the good things that have happen in my life and I am very grateful.
F1 Sunday
(I dont remember a heck of a lot about this race . )
Chuck got away in sixth spot or so , made two places in the first two laps, to fourth spot, owned that for two laps ,
Then Rue on a charge started reeling us in . His well prepared CBR is hecka fast and he’s a good rider.
Eventually he passed us , on the strait i believe , and made good to finish 4th , and us 5th.
We’ve been working towards understanding the pallet of suspension adjustments our machine has , particularly in the front end.
At this juncture Chuck is getting a pretty good grasp of what he wants and what can be improved . We made good gains this weekend,
about 2 seconds a lap on average over the previous meeting .
Along with our awesome suspension guru James Siddall of Super Plush Suspension , Chuck was able to zero in further for front end feel .
We believe there is still more gains to be had , and when we get to the Sears round which i think is more front end heavy we will have to
engineer for that.
Additionally we see some very fast and well sorted 600’s out there that are faster than our machine.
Our motor is a Moto 2 spec engine, (CBR 600) and not a lot is known about its disposition.
It was a sealed unit when in Moto 2 , and my guess is that whilst Honda endeavored to make it fast, they also wanted to make it reliable.
You see very few break downs in Moto 2. In the coming weeks we are going to be looking at the ECU tuning aspect on a dyno.
At the very least we need to match the map to the fuel we use here in the US, 100 octane, and see if we cant do more to optimize what we have . The ECU was also sealed but we were given an HRC hack. Thank you Wikileaks
We knew it would take a season to find all the tricks with this machine and we are working hard to put it on top of the podium .
A great weekend racing. Two 4ths and 5th and most importantly finding much more speed through handling improvements .
And more to be had no doubt.
We are not going to be at the next round , sorry. We will miss the 110 degree heat no doubt.
Chuck said:
I am doing a trip with work to Spain to see some of our best wineries and I will miss the next round. I am very blessed that I have found such a great job and something I am passionate about after racing. I look forward to riding at Sears on Sept. 1-2.
Next round for us is Sears and we will be making space on the shelf in our shop for more silver ware from that round.
You have been served
Chuck said:
I would like to thank all of our sponsors. Barker O’Dononghue Construction, James at SPS Suspension, its been great collaborating with you like we did 20years ago, now with more technology. Barf Racing, Hotel Biron, Authentic Wine Selections, Shoei Helmets, Tech Spec, and Z2 Trackdays. Special thanks to Ashley Jenkins for all your support, my wife Barbi and all my friends that support this program.
As some of you may know Crispin Barker my good friend and team principal runs this racing program with me. I asked him to help with this race report for a different, but close account of how our weekend went, he over delivered and I only have a few words to add. Thanks Crispy. I will put “ Chuck said” on all my quotes in this report. Everything else you read will be Crispin’s view.
Chuck Said:
We headed to Thill early Friday morning to do the Z2 Trackdays event on Friday. They are one of my sponsors. Thank you. We quickly got up to speed in afternoon practice and I think we got with in .3 of times from the last race. The main point of focus with bike set up has been the suspension, specifically front springs, and obtaining front “feel”.
F40 middleweight Saturday
As i recall we were gridded 2nd .
Flag dropped, bikes rolled away , our machine didn’t make the greatest start , still trying to figure out the launch program and a long first gear.
Cory Call from the fourth row i believe , just flat out went around the outside of every one , and charged off on his 750. Game set and match
Bless him
Meanwhile we had gotten over the rise towards turn two in 5th position and it was game on .
Berto Wooldridge, Tom ‘the bomb’ Montano , the inimitable Stephen Rue and our Chuckie on his fresh looking number 90.
What followed was a really great race with a four bike freight train.
Chuckie got up to the front of the pack for a while and actually put some space in , maybe 2 seconds, but for one reason and another
the group closed up in the final laps and the guys were really tussling for position .
Berto was at the front and was starting to get away as i recall .
Great entertainment , culminating in these four catching and mixing with another four lappers right at the first apex of turn 14 on the last lap!
It was a free for all. A melee. Great stuff!
In that instant it was fun watching the guys all like ‘WTF !’ and trying to make the best of it . We burst out laughing watching. Brilliant action !
As it happened, Rue was more bullish in the melee and had the advantage of being 3rd in our group going into the turn i believe, and saw it unfolding, kept his nerve and speed , and just in that 16th of a second of foresight, he was able to close right up behind Chuckie at the exit .
Darn it ! and ya he completed to cross the line for third and beat us by 1/10th of a second. But it was a hella fun race .
4th place for us.
Chuck Said :
This was a super fun race, it looked early on I would be on the podium, the competition got around the lappers better than I did and closed it up on the ending laps. I felt I rode hard and it was fun mixing it up with my friends. At this point we had gone softer again on the front springs and now the bike is in a “happy place” with its attitude both going into corners, mid corner and exit. We saw faster times in this race and felt we would go 1/3rd back stiffer on springs and try pushing a bit harder.
Open GP Sunday.
After the initial tear away, as i recall Chuck was maybe 6th or 5th . About a lap in , Chuck made some gains and set of like a man on a mission,
Catching and then passing Kevin Murphy. Murphy chased hard for a couple laps on his 1000, but then Chuck just kept puling away.
I was stoked to see our bike charging so hard. He was really bending it in and not letting off in turns 6 to 9.
The one liter bikes didn’t make much of a dent in our position at that point . It was very encouraging .
We know that a well sorted 600 is viable in most classes. and thats what we intend to do with ours.
T-Hill is the toughest because it is a motor track. But when we can corner with out letting off , we have a race .
For me personally , this 4th place in Open GP at T-hill was one of the most satisfying of our results this year .
Rock on Chuckie!
Chuck said:
This was personally a very satisfying race for me. Sometimes when you race lighter weight bikes with open bikes it can be frustrating, they pass you on the straights and you catch them in the corners. Racing against big bikes you have to think about your strengths, where you have the advantage on them and then, after passing them how am I going to gap them so as not to get passed on the next lap. It was a very emotional cool down lap. I thought about the challenges I have had in the past 10 years and all the good things that have happen in my life and I am very grateful.
F1 Sunday
(I dont remember a heck of a lot about this race . )
Chuck got away in sixth spot or so , made two places in the first two laps, to fourth spot, owned that for two laps ,
Then Rue on a charge started reeling us in . His well prepared CBR is hecka fast and he’s a good rider.
Eventually he passed us , on the strait i believe , and made good to finish 4th , and us 5th.
We’ve been working towards understanding the pallet of suspension adjustments our machine has , particularly in the front end.
At this juncture Chuck is getting a pretty good grasp of what he wants and what can be improved . We made good gains this weekend,
about 2 seconds a lap on average over the previous meeting .
Along with our awesome suspension guru James Siddall of Super Plush Suspension , Chuck was able to zero in further for front end feel .
We believe there is still more gains to be had , and when we get to the Sears round which i think is more front end heavy we will have to
engineer for that.
Additionally we see some very fast and well sorted 600’s out there that are faster than our machine.
Our motor is a Moto 2 spec engine, (CBR 600) and not a lot is known about its disposition.
It was a sealed unit when in Moto 2 , and my guess is that whilst Honda endeavored to make it fast, they also wanted to make it reliable.
You see very few break downs in Moto 2. In the coming weeks we are going to be looking at the ECU tuning aspect on a dyno.
At the very least we need to match the map to the fuel we use here in the US, 100 octane, and see if we cant do more to optimize what we have . The ECU was also sealed but we were given an HRC hack. Thank you Wikileaks
We knew it would take a season to find all the tricks with this machine and we are working hard to put it on top of the podium .
A great weekend racing. Two 4ths and 5th and most importantly finding much more speed through handling improvements .
And more to be had no doubt.
We are not going to be at the next round , sorry. We will miss the 110 degree heat no doubt.
Chuck said:
I am doing a trip with work to Spain to see some of our best wineries and I will miss the next round. I am very blessed that I have found such a great job and something I am passionate about after racing. I look forward to riding at Sears on Sept. 1-2.
Next round for us is Sears and we will be making space on the shelf in our shop for more silver ware from that round.
You have been served
Chuck said:
I would like to thank all of our sponsors. Barker O’Dononghue Construction, James at SPS Suspension, its been great collaborating with you like we did 20years ago, now with more technology. Barf Racing, Hotel Biron, Authentic Wine Selections, Shoei Helmets, Tech Spec, and Z2 Trackdays. Special thanks to Ashley Jenkins for all your support, my wife Barbi and all my friends that support this program.
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