Vesrah Suzuki Offroad Team

Opportunities to go racing are less frequent this year compared to last year so every time I get on the bike it’s a big deal. This past weekend was especially exciting because it was the first time I’ve been able to race my 2009 RM-Z250.

Lakewood, WI in the Oconto forest was my destination.  Joe wanted to go but had to back out at the last minute.  It was a little weird leaving town without Joe and his GPS but I had a new Suzuki to put time on could do it without Joe!  I sped to Lakewood, found the race venue, pitched camp, paid my entry fee, said hey to a few folks and went for a sighting walk on the opening mile of the course.

The Oconto area is littered with all the rock dragged down from Canada in the last ice age.  It’s mind-bending for me when I see enormous boulders all alone in a field or piled atop a ridgeline.  Accompanying the boulders are mountains of dirt randomly placed everywhere.  Strange but it makes for decent upper midwest winter skiing and summer motorcycling.

Under all those rocks are lots more rocks.

Because there’s a riff between the two series owners here in Wisconsin the racer turnouts have been smaller than year’s past.  Only two local AA riders were at the Lakewood round.  Both of them are young, fast and eager kids but it made the racing a little shallow.  With any luck the series can be knit back together next year.

Saturday’s race went counter clockwise around a 5 mile loop.  Sunday’s would be the same course but in the opposite direction.  I managed to totally screw myself out of a better result in Saturday’s race by letting the other AA riders get inside me on the first turn.  Brandon Houts earned the holeshot by taking a very tight line in “turn” 1 and Ryan Finnel followed his lead.  I spend the first 20 minutes of the race struggling to get by Ryan and by that time Brandon had checked out.

I put my head down, limited my mistakes and focused on carrying speed.  The RM-Z as shockingly good (more on that below) so I could focus on  race craft and not have to worry about the bike.  At about half race the skies opened up and soaked portions of the track to the point becoming dangerously slick.  In my second rookie mistake of the day I had only stacked a few tear-offs on my Oakley Crowbars goggles.  With those of no use to me I tossed them to a friend I saw standing on the side of the course.  With my vision now clear I was surprised at how slick the trial actually was.  I was better off not knowing how slick it was while I looked through smeared lenses.

Mud racing isn’t exactly my forte but I’m relatively comfy in the muck.  I hoped that the combination of liking the mud and the inexperienced youth I was chasing would be enough for me to close the gap to the front of the race but I ran out of time.  Maybe with a few more laps I could have chased Brandon down but it wasn’t to be.  He was much faster than I was on Saturday.

Saturday’s silly mistakes motivated me to do better on Sunday.  I wasn’t mad at Brandon or Ryan  but upset at myself for not planning like I should.  I should have been better at the start of the race and I should have prepared for bad weather racing.

This uphill off-chamber wasn't too bad until the rains came. Then it became challenging.

My start position on Sunday was to the inside of the others (a bigger field showed on Sunday but the same two riders would be the ones to beat).  I pulled the holeshot and made an extra big effort to distance myself from the others by carrying as much speed as I could on every straight and turn.  That kinda worked but I had to let up when the trail got tight in the woods.  Brandon knew the trail better than me and he’s faster in short spurts than I am. He closed up on me and passed me when I stalled it on top of an especially rocky knoll.  Ryan slipped by me too, darn it.  My bike fired and I chased, even more mad at myself than before the race.  After one more bobble I realized I was trying too hard and immediately change my focus back to being smooth and flowy.

Before long I had Ryan back in view and shortly after that I crested a hill and saw both Brandon and Ryan way off the trail and off their bikes.  They blew a turn that I had rehearsed in my head the night before.  Ha! I had found my rhythm and both those guys were behind me!

Brandon has some speed so he caught me again later that same lap.  I’ll never know if he burned himself up by pushing too hard trying to catch me or if simply lost motivation after I fought for position but either way, after we duked it out for trail position before I pulled away from him.  I finally won a AA overall but it feels like a hollow victory because the race had such a small field of racers.

After Saturday's race. I'm still pissed about throwing the race away at the start.

Now for my RM-Z experience.  A dozen things  converged in Lakewood and all of them have me beaming about the bike.  Suzuki Mark gave me a few gallons of R-Tech race fuel that is pretty much liquid horsepower. It made a whole new bike out of the RM-Z.  Factory Connection-tuned my fork and shock.  The confidence I had in the suspension put a smile on my face several times a lap.  The Magura hydraulic clutch eliminated arm and hand fatigue and provided a ton of clutch feel.  And the RM-Z can turn!  I suspect it’s a combination of refined chassis design, suspension set up, weight distribution and trying hard to turn better but I was frequently elated with how well the RM-Z gets around a bend.

Just like Monday mornings in 2008.

Compared to the RM I’ve been on for most of the past 3 years the RM-Z is eye opening.  The engine on the RM-Z is violent because it makes so much exhaust noise but its so very predictable and manageable that you almost love to make all that noise.  I found myself on the gas more often because I trusted that the engine would make friendly power.  There’s not enough power to scare me but plenty to go fast with.  Couple that usable power with a chassis that glided over whoops, held the high line around big berms and gave acceleration and braking traction galore and you can see why I’m over the moon with glee.

There's no way to capture how steep and awkward this turn is in photo. I mucked it up 13 times in a row.

Why am I so in love with my 2009 RM-Z250?  After all, the RM has been a go-to bike for woods makeovers for a while and in general 2strokes make better tight woods bikes.  It feels like my riding habits jive better with the engine characteristics of the small displacement 4stroke.  I absolutely loved grabbing a handful of throttle in 3rd gear on the RM-Z where I might have only done that on the RM once in a month.  Perhaps the chassis on the RM is a tad dated as well.  RMs had been unchanged for several years before Suzuki stopped importing them whereas the RM-Z chassis underwent at least 3 revisions.  The only reason I’m using the brainpower to understand why the RM-Z is better than the RM is because it was SOOO much better.

There are a handful of niggling things I need to work through, however.  The race gas has messed with the jetting.  That will take a bit of study but I know I can get it to smoothed out.  The bigger issue with that is that it burns more fuel and there aren’t any big tanks for RM-Z bikes yet – or ever.  In fact, Joe and I make a habit of draining the gas from our bikes between rides and when I went to drain my bike after Sunday nothing dripped out.  The only fuel I had left was what was in the bowl of the carb!

Gearing is another issue.  The stock 12/48 feels too short but its probably what makes all that lovely torque in 3rd gear.  As is, the bike is a 3 speed because most of the tight stuff can be done in 3rd and the open sections done in 4th and 5th.  Shane Nalley at FMF Suzuki (Mullens and Strang’s team manager) suggested I try 13/51 which is just taller than the stock ratio.  He might be right.

I have to mention how magical the GPR steering damper is on the RM-Z.  I did one real ride at Dyracuse without a damper (but with the Factory Connection suspension settings) and felt like the rear of the bike could come around to the front of the bike at any moment.  After installing the GPRv4 kit the bike totally settled down.  The dirt at Lakewood was filled with fist-sized rocks that you could see and that were hidden just below the surface.  And the trail eroded in a way that made 4 foot wide square edged holes – challenging enough for all riders and bikes at any speed.  But the stability of the RM-Z put me at ease and I attacked those sections ass up and full noise.  Superfun.

And now the really bad news.  I won’t race again until August sometime, at best.  Work and family come first for the next few months. With any luck I can sneak away to Dyracuse for an afternoon but that will be all I can manage.  The RM-Z will be cleaned up and ready to go, however, no matter when I get the chance to ride again.

Hare scramble "big" air.