AMA SportBike Privateer: Infineon Report II
The first practice for 2011 AMA Daytona Sportbike at Infineon Raceway, Calif., would be noon the next day (Friday the 13th) and the first Qualifying session was scheduled for 2:50 p.m.
Riding my Harley Streetglide from Thousand Oaks, I didn’t leave for Sonoma until 8 a.m. on Friday, knowing I wouldn’t make it for AMA SportBike practice, but figured I could be there before qualifying.
I was bringing my Peak Performance Racing Kawasaki team a set of carbon brake pads that had been back-ordered and finally arrived at the shop the day before. Meanwhile, our pilot Paddy McCord would practice on OEM brake pads.
Other than the two scheduled Daytona SportBike races, the Friday morning practice was the longest window of opportunity for Paddy to be on track.
The plan was to get the carbon pads there before SportBike qualifying with enough time to clean the rotors of stock pad material and re-bed them with the carbon pads.
As Alan McCord (Paddy’s father) met me out front with the parking pass, he informed me that Paddy had practiced on the stock pads and they were good enough to use for qualifying; we could change the pads afterward. That seemingly harmless deferment would later prove to be disastrous.
Paddy was not feeling very well during the Friday morning practice and his lap times were not helping his confidence. The problem was hard to pinpoint precisely, but he had lingering jet lag from his Hawaiian trip the weekend prior and was required to work long hours at his job thereafter prior to his trip to the Infineon track.
He had not competed in a race for nearly a year and was feeling the typical angst of a young man expected to do well at a national race. You could say the situation was not ideal, but then when is it ever?
These articles report on Peak Performance Racing’s journey as the team competes in the AMA Daytona SportBike series with pilot Patrick “Paddy” McCord of California. The article, written by Peak Performance Motorcycles’ owner Danny DiNardo, chronicles what it takes to get started and compete in AMA Pro Racing competition. When Ultimate Motorcycling heard about the project, we immediately got involved.