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RISPOLI: Indy Mile

September 15, 2010

With Dustin Say (my chief Flat Track mechanic) at my side, we made our way to Indy making a pit stop in Pittsburgh at my sponsor Ant-Racing.com. We dropped off a trailer with two GSX R600 SuperSport bikes that were going to be worked on by my chief road race mechanic Ryan Kelly coming up from Florida to prepare them for NJMP. Dustin and I continued on to Indy in my race van with our Cycle Dynamics/Vadnais Machine 450's ready to go. We felt confident a podium was something we could achieve. I qualified in 8th position that Saturday night trying several set ups, gear ratios etc to dial the bike in. We were feeling really good about what we could do since the difference between 1st and 8th was only around 3/10ths of a second. In the heat I was nipped at the line and took third but that was still good enough for a front row start. Anywhere on the front row of the mile is a good thing.

In the final I took the lead and was closely followed by Beach. He and I got out to an early lead and started pulling away. The new set up on my bike was really working. By lap 8 I started to loose rear grip and started loosing ground to Beach. Carver and Toon were coming up fast and I duked it out a couple of laps with them before they continued to pull away a little as I continued to slip and drop. I thought I could secure 4th then but with two to go another rider squeaked by and I ended up 5th overall. This is not what I wanted but it was still an awesome race that I know the fans loved. The rest of that night was awesome too. The autograph sessions were really busy with lines of people coming around to get a poster and autograph. The place was red hot with a surprise ride by Nicky Hayden on the Lloyd Brothers Ducati with packed stands cheering. I had a really fun time but I also had work to do to get my butt to Pittsburgh to catch an early Sunday morning flight to Salt Lake City.