Out of the Tracks and Onto the Races

by Alessandro 'Vale' Acquisti - USGPRU (1)25

As the 125cc engines start the smell of 2-strokes comes pungent and familiar. It’s first day of practice at CCS/USGPRU Championship Jennings GP, Florida, Friday morning, April’s fool. The intoxicating mix of silikolene and fuel evokes Roman memories - the teenager days spent racing the city on a Honda125NS, looking for challengers and troubles at every streetlight. Those days did not give me any introduction to apex cornering or knee dragging, but they did teach me to slide through traffic grazing at high speed somebody’s else vespa or lambretta, or a terrified driver’s left view mirror.

Such skills come useful as I start the first 125 race practice of my life and the senior riders pass me at full throttle within inches of my bike - and my own life. It’s called karma.

I get to Jennings with David (the one to blame for this strange new adventure) and his wife Rebecca. Both are racers and incredibly cool people. David grants me the rock star treatment: I fly down to Jacksonville on Thursday night while the 3 race bikes of the scuderia Celento-Hann are being trucked down by David on his minivan + ’57 airstream.

We get to the track early on Friday morning. From that moment on, it’s an uninterrupted, breathless, exhilarating, exhausting, energizing series of practices, crashes, repairs, ambulances, maintenance, refueling, racing, packing, unpacking, repacking, and, most importantly, revving, that ends only at 2 am on Sunday night – when I safely get back to my apartment in Pittsburgh.

In theory, the plan is simple: Friday practice, Saturday qualifications, Sunday races (there are several categories of bikes and riders. I race in the 125cc class).

In practice, there is an endless list of minutiae to take care of – such as remembering to put the special fuel in your tank every two practices, plugging and unplugging the tire warmers before you go on the track, repairing or replacing motorcycle parts you did not even know existed, or un-mounting and re-mounting your front and real wheel 2 or 3 times over the weekend.

It’s past 9am, and they are about to call my class. I prepare for my first practice on a 125 – I put on my gear and leather, including my new gloves – as expensive as a small vespa – and my new helmet. I deliberately and coolly move towards my crotchrocket. Which doesn't start.

David pushes and pushes the Yamaha, to no avail. It’s late already (practice for each group lasts only 20 minutes: you are in, you are out, and you do not even realize what happened; then you have to rush back to the paddock, to take care of something on your bike before the speaker already calls your group back on the track. Repeat several times for the whole weekend until exhaustion).

David decides to give me his bike – one of those last minute changes I will get more and more familiar with as the weekend proceeds. So I go.

The first practice on David’s bike is a turn-off. The bike is not fast at all!

Alas, it’s me. Accustomed to my ducati 748 – that springs out with power at 4,000 revs and does not like to be handled above 9,000-10,000 - I do not push David’s bike beyond what I fear are its limits. First lesson of the day: these racing 125s give a literal meaning to the term “screaming engine.” Nothing happens until 11,000. The fun starts there and it’s all power up past 13,000, where you get some serious action and the bike starts to tremble.

These bikes are cool and weird – they are (almost) as light as bicycles, but (surely) fast as hell. The first turns on David’s bike are freaky – it’s a completely new sensation. Compared to my steady ducati, this baby follows each and every pressure I exercise on the handlebars – immediately and a little too precisely.

By the second practice my bike is on and running, and I know I need to push it hard. Yet, I realize I do not know where to keep my left foot – it keeps on moving down past the peg and 3 times it hits the ground as I am bending on a left turn. I come back to the pit before breaking my ankle.

By the next practice I have learnt the legs position, but I also discover it’s an impossible one – I get cramps during the 3^rd lap and painfully make it back to the pit. My ducati is comfortable in comparison (never thought I could say this of my ass-in-the-air 748).

The fourth practice, I find a position I can handle – only to realize that my body is way too tired and slow in moving from one side to the other for each turn. My riding speed is improving and I am getting more and more fun – deeper down on the turns. But I also realize more and more the limitations of my body and its current shape. I think it must be a funny show to see for the riders behind me – I am so NOT flexible that it’s like I am break-dancing at very slow speed on the pegs from one turn to the other.

I, for sure, get an amazing show as the faster riders pass me. There are some pros who came to this race from CA, TX, MI, everywhere. As they bend down for their turns, their bodies are making love to the ground – knees, elbows, hips are on the asphalt, their bikes delicately balanced at impossible angles. It’s the laws of physics in action, and it’s a mesmerizing dance to watch.

Practice on Friday is cut short by rain. We retreat to the airstream, and we start doing the only rational thing – getting drunk, telling racing stories. Three bottles of red and lots of ipodding after, David and I profess our friendship and discover our common desire of having “great gig in the sky” played at our respective funerals – some time in the 22nd century.

Pit life is funny. I go around the paddocks fascinated by the mix of people, stuff, and bikes.

Saturday morning, more practice, then quals. I start getting the sense of the track and feel much faster than Friday. Of course, I am immediately punished for that– I go out on the dirt exiting turn 2 (a fast turn at the end of the main stretch), but I keep control and get back on the track. It’s called target-locking: as you realize you are a little too fast for a turn, you panic and starting looking at the outside, where you fear you are directed. And that’s of course where you end up going. Genetic evolution could not foresee that riding at 90+ mph would make this an undesirable feature of the human brain.

David, who is WAY faster than me, at the same point does something much more spectacular during the following practice. As I ride on lap 1, I see him standing on the grass and holding is chest (bad sign for sure, but not as bad as a body not moving on the dirt). Then I notice his bike, skillfully balanced in an upright position. That’s right: his bike is upside down and lying perfectly vertical on its tank. David has “high-sided” running on cold tires (long story short: never let somebody else use your tools and unplug your tire-warmers before entering the track); he opened gas on the exit of that fast turn, and the bike threw him out in the sky like a catapult, before itself pirouetting in the air and in the dirt. I go back to the pit and wait, a little nervous, for him to come back. The raceway truck brings him and his bike back – the bike’s a wreck. David becomes the hero of the day, as a procession of young and old riders pass by our pit in awe of the incredible spectacle of a bike that looks like it just went through a close encounter with a white shark and a whale.

New last minute change: I give David my bike for his qualifying– which he does, notwithstanding some broken fingers in his left hand. A real trooper. (Over the weekend there are several crashes, but no serious injury – mostly broken fingers and collarbones.)

It’s Sunday, racing day. I am excited and nervous. The preparations continue – more fuel, new tires to mount, the pegs to elevate, the track to revise mentally. Which gear do you use on turn 6? Do you downshift twice before the chicane? What pointer do you use to close gas on turn 1?

Soon it’s time to get in – and the adrenaline grows with the sound of all the revving 125 engines moving from the paddocks to the grid.

By the way, my bike has practically no neutral. I need to pull the clutch the entire time before the start, and keep on revving to keep the engine from dying. As the 2 seconds, 1 second (to go) signals are raised, everybody’s revving becomes a pandemonium of high pitching noises, a beautiful cacophony of tension. Green flag, and we start.

What can I say about the race – I can’t recall much, except that it was one of the most exhilarating and intense experiences of my life. I am a rookie and I am slow compared to the senior riders, but I feel I am getting faster after each lap. And, of course, I do my first big novice mistake. I am passed at the end of the main stretch by a guy who closes me very aggressively before the turn – I need to pull the front brake like crazy in order not to knock him (and myself) out of the track and onto his next karmic journey. As we bend down on the left turn close together, however, I notice that I still have somehow better corner speed, and realize I can take him. Foolish pride – I open gas to pass him on the outside, and…woops! I am on the grass! End of race, big lesson learnt, huge adrenaline shoot.

David and Rebecca also race, and they are very fast – David with a left hand which has become blue. After all races, David, Rebecca and I pack up, and then drive back to Jacksonville airport. We get there just in time for my flight – another race after the race. As I step onto my plane, I am sun-burnt, mentally exhausted, physically in pain – lactic acid all around my legs, my back in the usual condition (during the weekend the three of us consume two bottles of advil). I am hot and I try not to move any muscle of my body for the entire flight, not to consume any additional energy and feel even hotter.

For the first time in 3 days I have time to stop and reflect.

What is it that pushes these people to throw themselves on hot asphalt, racing at 130+ mph, during a weekend they could have spent playing golf with their buddies or watching nascar, and then come back home, exhausted, several hundreds of dollars lighter, with broken bones, bruises, wrecked motorcycles, and a smell of oil and gasoline and sweat that will outlast a couple of showers? I do not know, but I am hooked. As David tells me, “We were there, and they weren’t.”