Saturday Practice 1 & 2:
Our goal for the weekend was to evaluate different DOT race tires. We started out on set of the previous weekends Pirelli Super Corsa Pros for the first session. We then put on a set of Bridgestone DOTs that the trackside vendor had. The tires felt good and didn’t seem to do anything bad in the second practice session.
Saturday Race#1 EX-GTL:
In the GTL race I started last so I concentrated on trying to get a really good start. I did get a good start and I was working my way up through the field when I noticed the bike was running a little on the warm side. I backed off the pace a little bit to see if it would bring the temp down, but it didn’t work so I pulled into the pits to get a look at it and make sure there was nothing wrong. We decided to call it a race since I lost so much time in the pits and I got ready for the next race. The tires seemed consistent. They seemed to have pretty good feel from the front and rear.
Saturday Race#2 EX-Thunderbike:
I got a really good start and the tires were feeling AWESOME! I had worked myself into the top 5. After the second lap the front tire started pushing really bad. The tire really wouldn’t hold the line in corner entry. It became very hard to make the APEX of the corner well. To say the least the front end was not very confidence inspiring. With the front tire pushing it was difficult to get a good drive out of a corner and I ended up dropping back to an 8th place finish.
Saturday Race#3 EX-Light Weight Grand Prix:
Between LWGP and Thunderbike there was only about 10 minutes to grab some water, refuel the bike, and get back to the track. So for the next race I got another really good start. I started the race in last place (22nd) and by the end of the first lap I as in the top 15. I ran the race as fast as I could. I still had the confidence in the rear tire.  The tire wasn’t spinning on corner exit and it felt really good, but the front was not working any better than in the last race. I ended up finishing the race in 7th place.
Sunday Practice:
A couple changes we wanted to make for the next day were gearing and tires. On the gearing we went up one tooth on the transmission sprocket. This would enable me to change my shift points around a little bit and to get more out of 4th gear on the straight. As far as tires went, we decided to try using Donlop’s DOT tires. On Sundays you get one 20 minute practice session and I thought that would be a good situation to evaluate the tires. Right away on the outlap I noticed the Dunlops had really solid feel. However, on my second lap I noticed the front end was hopping on high speed corner entry while trail- braking and turning at the same time. In corners where I was going straight, braking hard, and then turning (with very minimal trail-braking) the front end felt fine. I pulled into the hot pit to adjust the rebound compression dampening to see if that would cure the problem. We were not able to get the problem fixed in that session so we decided we weren’t going to burn up a set of tires if we weren’t able to fight for the lead, so we decided the best thing to do would be to continue to use the Bridgestone rear and the Pirelli Supercorsa Pro front.
Because of the instability we were getting from the Dunlop front tire we were unable to evaluate the gearing changes and this adjustment was left to be evaluated in the next race.
Sunday Race#4 EX-Supertwins:
In this race I got an amazing start and went into turn one in 3rd place from the third row (got to love the torque of a Buell and the way an Evolution Industries clutch works. The clutch has a very linear feel and you can easily control the amount of drive by just feathering the clutch.) Supertwins is a tough class. We got beat by (2) 1098s, an Apirlia Mile, a 749 Ducatti and Brett Guyer on a 1000 Supersport. The gearing change worked well enabling us to run in the 18s for the first time. In the end I finished 6th. I don’t feel too bad about this finish considering I only have 85 HP compared to a 1098s 140 stock HP. I was still 3 seconds per lap slower than 1st place so we will be adding some HP for the next weekend.
Sunday Race#5 EX-Light Weight Superbike:
Because of pre-entry miscommunication with LRRS (apparently you have to fax your entry 10 days prior to a race weekend and 8 days was not enough) I had to start last in 3 out of 5 races we entered this weekend, this being one of them. After the first lap I had worked up the field into 8th place from 17th. The Bridgestone rear started to step out at full lean and try to high side me when I tried to apply maintenance throttle to drive past the APEX of the corner, but coming off of the corner the rear tire would not spin at all when I was driving onto the straightaway. I was running as high as 5th but with the bike trying to spit me off at the APEX of every corner a guy got by me and I finished 6th.  I continued to run 18s in this race.

Tire Evaluation on Buell XB9 (85 HP and 65 ft lbs torque):
Pirelli Supercorsa Pros:
Front- Has amazing feel even after 7-8 races and 3 practice sessions
Rear- Controllably spins, it doesn’t try to high side you and lets you know what it is doing at all times
Bridgestone Battlax BT-002R Racing Pro Tire:
Front- Pushes after 2 laps and hard to catch your APEX
Rear- After 3 sprint races started to high side me at max lean. Probably would be a very good track day tire for someone who is a casual Sport rider.  These are very inexpensive.
Dunlops:
Front- Very solid feel, jury still out on corner entry.
Rear- Solid feel, feels really planted we will be doing more testing with them before we race with them.
Haven’t tested Michelin DOTs yet.