The teams were set, practice was done, the bikes were ready, and the air horn had sounded: it was time for the three-hour endurance race that Honda was calling the Grom Prix! Time for you to guess how I finished…and then you can read on to see how accurate you were!
Did you miss Part 1? Time to learn about the background of what’s about to happen!
Race Report – The Honda Grom Prix, Part 2
Photos by Drew Ruiz.
Well, the race had begun. No bailing out now!
After seeing timing from everyone’s practice session in the morning we had identified one team that we thought was our biggest challenge to the top of podium and we decided to match our riders against theirs. Based on who they sent out for the start of the race, we sent out Trevor. He had a great Le Mans start and we commenced the race in a solid second place.
The problem with our strategy was that it was very reactive. Things fell apart very quickly as the first rider from the other team came in…very quickly. We thought people would be doing ~30 minute sessions, but he pitted within 10-12 minutes or so. That threw me (if not my teammates) off guard and Trevor came in 5 minutes later. Ok, I guess I’m up! Unfortunately, the rider switch was so much earlier than expected that I never even put a GoPro in my helmet mount to film my first session and I don’t have any footage from it. My teammates also had an Insta360 on the front handlebar and hopefully you’ll be able to see that footage in a Chaseontwowheels video in the short-term future.
In practice, I was doing lap times around 0:41, so that was the benchmark that my team expected from me. But after the suspension tuning and me getting into “angry Abhi race mode”, I was doing 0:39s if I didn’t have traffic to deal with. In my excitement I forgot to note the time on the dash clock when I started my session so I just planned to keep riding until I saw my teammates wave me down. My times apparently kept constant/slightly decreasing so they called me in after about 32 minutes.
The world of racing is rather new to me, so I was highly entertained by the track timing hardware/software that Sportbike Track Time was using from MyLaps. It’s also extra nice when you just show up and all of this is handled for you – I’m going to have to buy one myself for my upcoming CB160 racing and I’ve already spent way more time than I’m willing to admit trying to find the right tool at a cheap price.
The timers that would keep us honest.
One of the very few rules about the Grom Prix is that each team was obligated to come in for a fuel stop. Our team’s strategy was to come in as early as possible to do so to get it out of the way and eliminate possible concerns of having to knock it out near the end and lose a place when stresses were higher, and we figured this was feasible due to fuel consumption calculations made during practice. This may have added a tiny amount of weight to the bike over the course of the race but I had a light lunch so it probably worked out…
So we knocked out our fuel stop after my first session, and I was stoked to get a warm reception from our team:
Christian then went out but he came in after just eight minutes or so, it turns out that he had some sciatica acting up. I felt bad for him because he was obviously faster than the lap times he was giving us. And yet, the part of me that wanted to win was frustrated about the change to our strategy. Competition does not suit me well as I apparently become insensitive.
During the race we were mixing it up between 1st and 3rd but due to a couple of hiccups with the timing software it was sometimes tough to know exactly what our status was. When Christian came in, Trevor took over and knocked out some fantastic laps, we were in between 1st and 2nd depending on what other teams were doing with a pit strategy.
After Trevor’s masterpiece of riding, it was my turn to go back out. This time I was ready with my helmet camera, so below please find an abbreviated look at my second stint (which ended up being 34 minutes). This starts with a couple of examples of me being good and aggressive plus a lap following the wonderful Evan Allen of Motorcyclist Magazine so you can see the course layout and how much he pulls me on the straightaway with a 60 pound weight advantage. =)
It ends with a couple of examples of me being too much of a wuss to commit to an inside pass – the first time I got away with it, but the second time Bradley Adams of Cycle World got the better of me (and gave me a good shoulder bump to rub it in, haha).
Battling with Brad was a personal highlight of the race, he is QUICK and I hope to learn more from riders like him.
I attempt to convince Brad to go slower. It does not work out.
At the end of my second and final session we had a two lap lead with 55 minutes to go. Christian was up next, and due to the abbreviated length of his previous stint we needed him to cover extra time on this session. If he didn’t get 45 minutes done by the end of the race, we’d be disqualified. He ended up giving us a hell of an effort as he fought through his back pain and alternated with Trevor until the end of the race – Christian needed to close out the last 10 minutes or so to knock out his minimum so we figured we’d switch him in at about 15 minutes to give us a cushion.
With about 20 minutes left, I overheard my buddy Ricki mention that the race was going to end at 8pm. That was a bit surprising, as the race started five minutes late (at 5:05pm) and we thought it was thus going to end at 8:05pm. Turns out Ricki was correct – this required us to move our rider switch accordingly and we signaled Trevor down to come in immediately. Trevor caught the signal and was going to come in…but Christian was nowhere to be found. Turns out he had gone to use the restroom as he thought he had a few more minutes, but he didn’t know about the change in schedule! I started laughing – how comical would it have been if we fell to second place because of a unluckily-timed bathroom break? Thankfully it turned out to be no issue at all as he back quickly, and we got our last rider switch of the day taken care of with no issues.
The banking was my favorite corner of the track.
With five minutes left in the race and the light fading fast, we started to see red flags all around the track…but no one in the pit area had any idea what was going on. All of the teams waited anxiously to see who was coming in and hoping that their rider was part of the group. I saw Christian come in and breathed a sigh of relief – then I was concerned to see that my friend Andy Greaser of RevZilla hadn’t returned. My hope that it was just a mechanical issue was quickly dashed as the medic drove the ambulance out onto the track and someone else mentioned that they had seen Andy on the ground. Thankfully Andy ended up OK but there were definitely a couple of hours of uncertainty on that front as we all waited to hear an update after he went to the hospital. You should definitely check out Andy’s story from the event here!
The good news for Andy’s team was that he was OK. The bad news is that they were disqualified because they didn’t finish – there’s a reason why the phrase “to finish first, you first have to finish” exists. Because of the incident, the event ended a bit earlier than expected – the track had to shut down at 8pm and there’s no way the race could be restarted beforehand. When it was all said and done, we had ridden for 2 hours, 50 minutes, and 27.338 seconds. We had finished it first place, covering 221 laps with a best time of 39.366 seconds:
Our closest competitor was Grom Hanks – they were was 2 laps back but they were DQ’d at the en dof the race. Old Testament was 3 laps back, and the team in 4th place got was able to take advantage of Grom Hanks’ misfortune to jump up to a podium spot. The mood was a little somber as Andy’s health was the biggest concern for everyone…but we knew he wasn’t too beat up so we still had to celebrate. Sorry, Andy!
Turns out the foam hat was a little small…
I apparently need more practice with champagne bottles.
Asking for a friend – how do you get champagne stains out of a race suit?
So, what’s next? Well, I’m hoping my newfound racing success will continue through this season of AHRMA racing as I will toss around another small Honda – the CB175 race bike I’ve been updating you guys on.
Beyond that, I’ve asked Honda if I can buy this bike from them because I have an emotional connection to it and I love the upgrades that are on it. They haven’t said no yet but it sounds like I need to wait a year for the bike to age out of the press fleet, which makes sense. I had to wait a similar amount of time before I bought a first-year Monkey out of the press fleet for Vy to use. Hopefully a year from now you’ll see a post from me saying that I bought this Grom and then I’ll use it for local mini moto racing…
Another thanks to the best teammates in the business!
THE END!