Velocity Racing's 'Honey Badger' Blog

If you’ve followed my race reports at all, you know there have been some struggles. If you’ve talked to me in person, you probably have a better feel of just how much of a struggle things have been since I decided to move on the ZX10R. Between my leg and mechanical issues, it’s been a rough two years. Things were finally sorted out, at least for the time being. The leg is what it is at this point, and I’m familiar enough with its shortcomings that it’s not much of an excuse anymore. The bike is running well and is no longer actively trying to kill me, so that excuse has taken a hike. The last part was bike set up. On these big bikes it just really seems like proper set up makes a massive difference, and little things that are unknown or missed just crush (at least my) confidence. This has finally started to get moved in the right direction, and with a quick re-spring on the front this weekend, I felt like things were finally “getting there.” Coming into the weekend was a rush...

All photos by Oxymoron Photography   To say that the last couple years of “racing” (I’ll use the term loosely) have been frustrating would be an understatement. First, there was the broken leg saga that lasted nearly all of last year (still hasn’t even been a year since my last surgery), trying to adjust to the new, completely different bike, and then the bike problems. Oh, the bike problems! After the last round, when the bike really started to act up, I decided to go and pull the transmission out myself (after arguing with everyone about what was the problem and finally replacing nearly the entire electrical system) only to find it destroyed. Good thing was I pulled it before it tried really, really, hard to kill me, although I’m still fairly certain that was the primary cause of my highside back at round 2. I ordered parts, and one gear was on backorder, and since I wanted to rebuild this right I decided to gut my street bike and put that transmission and clutc...