COVER STORY
Going Pro
Author: Nick Desautels, with photos by Greg Consier
Grasshopper makes the jump to Moto-ST
I’ve gotten to do some pretty cool things thus far in my 28 years of existence on this planet. I’ve done barrel rolls over the Gulf of Alaska in a single-engine bush plane, sat in the cockpit of an F15 fighter jet, traveled to almost every state in the union through my job, played semi pro ice hockey and been to Japan, Sweden and Denmark. This experience probably tops everything so far.  I try to keep it real. That's how this whole motorcycle racing sickness started for me, anyway. In 2000, my friend Gus Gans, owner of Resurrection Racing, asked my dad and me to go camping and watch some motorcycle races in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. I had no idea where that was or what to expect. I’d never seen a roadrace in my entire little redneck, hillbilly life. Mind you I’ve been fascinated by motorcycles since the first day I laid eyes on one at a young age. I'd been riding dirtbikes around corn fields and on trails all throughout my childhood so I knew motorcycles were cool and all but never realized they were THIS freakin’ cool!
We showed up late on a Thursday night to this campground they called The Zoo. The place was directly across the street from Road America and basically had no rules aside from expecting you to pay for your site. God rest The Zoo's soul by the way. While it is no longer in operation, anyone who’s lost brain cells there will miss that place dearly. By the time we arrived, the party was already swingin’ and people were doing lurid wheelies up and down the county highway out front even though it was pitch black out. The next morning I awoke to the buzzing scream of 2-stroke 250 GP bikes powering up the hill on the front straight. I couldn't wait to get over there and check out all the cool race bikes. From that first day walking around the pits at Road America, I told myself I’d be a motorcycle roadracer one day. I haven't missed a year at the races since then. I go there to party with my friends, some of whom I only see and remember from camping at RA. I also go for the love of motorcycles; a passion I shared with my dad. That first year we went, my dad saw how much I was digging the scene, so he told me that I needed to go racing. My father was only able to make it that first year. The next season he was killed in a traffic accident on his motorcycle, right in front of my eyes. I’ve never forgotten what he told me. It’s what led me to CCS club racing, first as an Amateur and then as an Expert. This year at Road America, I was able to fulfill his goal for me by riding my first race as a professional with Moto-ST. That it happened at the very event where my father had first told me to chase my dream is almost beyond belief. A big part of the reason I’ve made it to this point is because I knew it was what Dad wanted for me. That’s straight from the heart. My Moto-ST adventure began one boring morning as I was sitting at my desk. The phone rang and it was K3. “Nick, are you ready for this one?” he asked. The first thing that came out of my mouth was, “How much money is it going to cost?” Let’s just take a step back for a second and I’ll try to explain the way Mr. Onwiler works. Our very own K3 is a facilitator and an instigator. The pot is always simmering and his head is constantly mixing up ten million ideas to make life more interesting, both for himself and others. The guy is a master at networking and is always trying to hook people up with opportunities. When you’re around K3, you truly do have to be careful what you wish for, because he just might find a way to make it happen. Chris expects a lot from his buddies but gives back every bit as good as he gets, which is what makes him such a good friend. “Fine K3,” I said. “What is it? Just lay it on me.” “Do you want to race Moto-ST?” He said. The word “Want” was a given. I’d been talking about running that series since it first came out. The big, ugly question was, “How much?” We won’t disclose the amount, but after a few weeks of working in Alaska I had some extra cash to burn so I took him up on the offer. Said cash was actually supposed to go to the melted KX250 ice racing motor that’s sitting in my living room but that project will have to wait. The deal was that Mitch Stein of Mid Illini Motorsports had invited K3 to compete on their Moto-ST team at Road America in June. K3 declined the offer from Mitch and recommended me instead. Why? In K3’s own words, “I’m not fast enough to race Pro. You are.” No pressure there, eh? So began the madness. My lean, green, dirt bike bars equipped Apocalypse SV street bike (please view the “Grattan Counterclockwise article for pictures) was quickly torn apart and brought down to Mid Illini Motorsports, (M.I.M.) which is located in Pekin, Illinois. We used my machine with M.I.M. team body work, steering damper and special Moto-ST gas tank with a dry break fuel cap. A nice bonus for the weekend was that there was some AMA amateur flat track racing going on in Pekin. We worked on the Moto-ST bike during the day and then I went racing at the dusty, clay oval under the lights that night on my short track machine; a KTM450SX. Here is a quick overview of Moto-ST. It is a professional motorcycle endurance racing series for 4 stroke twin cylinder machines. There are more rules than you’d believe but the main ones are as follows. The field is broken down  into 3 different classes; SST, GST and ST. The SST class machines must produce at least 90 horsepower and no more than 118 horsepower. The Minimum post-race weight is 400 pounds. GST motorcycles must produce at least 75 horsepower and no more than 90 horsepower. The minimum post-race weight is 390 pounds. ST motorcycles may not produce more than 75 horsepower. The minimum post-race weight is 360 pounds. Each race is set to run either a certain distance or to end after a specific amount of time if the distance cannot be achieved. A minimum of two riders must take a turn aboard each motorcycle. Prize money is substantial enough that a winning team with good sponsors might actually be able to turn a small profit. The series is managed by the Daytona Motorsports Group, (Can you say NASCAR?) has attracted factory involvement and is quickly becoming the playground of many older pro riders who still enjoy racing but are no longer up for the rigors of AMA competition. Heck, they even hold autograph sessions so that the fans can meet the riders! In short, Moto-ST is a VERY big deal…. PREPARING THE BIKE Mitch Stein at M.I.M. was a very good mentor throughout our preparation of the #27 Moto-ST bike. Mitch has been building racing machines for more than a decade and I learned a number of new racer tricks from him. His wife, family and crew welcomed me into their circle like I was an old friend. Though I’d been nervous on the way down there, I felt at home almost from the get-go as we wrenched and worked on transforming my SV street bike into a Moto-ST racer. I tried my best to treat Mitch’s shop and tools as my own and with respect. Unfortunately Mitch’s paint man didn’t have the body work and tank ready in time so I had to leave the bike down in Pekin for that to be mounted. We were really hoping to get the bodywork installed that day but unfortunately it just didn’t happen. I returned the following weekend to pick the machine up. There were a few brackets that still needed to be fabricated and basically the entire machine still needed a once (or twice for that matter) over before it would be ready for the track. That is where the Resurrection Racing team (my home town crew, sponsors and best friends) really came through for me. My plan was to test the motorcycle at a Sportbike Track Time trackday at Autobahn Country Club on the weekend prior to the Road America race. As I picked up the bike at Mid Illini Motorsports, Mitch kept telling me “Don’t Crash it, dude. Just ride it for a couple of laps. THAT’S ALL!!!.” Ok Mitch, will do. Yea Right! LOL!!! I knew that if I didn’t put at least a dozen good hard 9/10ths race pace laps on the machine, I wouldn’t be sure I had all the bugs shaken out. As soon as I got back home to Park Forest, Illinois after picking the bike up from Mitch’s shop in Pekin, it went straight to  Gus’s shop, the Resurrection Racing den of depravity and high-performance motorcycle mayhem. The Autobahn track day was the following morning. This left little time to go over the bike and make sure all my ducks were in a row before I could ride it. Gus and I attacked the bike. Several quarts of midnight oil later, the machine was ready to go. We had a good 6 hours of wrenching into the bike at Gus’s house, finally finishing at 2 AM. At this point my confidence in the machine was high. The next morning at the Autobahn STT trackday, I found a few more problems that needed to be solved but nothing major. The bike seemed to handle differently than before due to the swap from dirtbike bars to clip-ons, however the most noticeable difference was the Pirelli tires. They were very, very sticky but just didn’t have the same feel as the Michelins, which are what I’m used to. Since Pirelli is the spec tire of Moto-ST, I had no choice but to run them at Road America for this race. Still, if given the option, I think I’ll be a Michelin man forever. At Autobahn, I was able to run some consistent, respectable lap times without putting the bike at risk. I felt ready to rock and roll, but the bike still needed to be gone through with a fine tooth comb. Remember, this was still just my street bike, even beneath all the fancy Mid Illini Motorsports parts and paint. I was pretty stressed out about this because I would have to be out of town for work the entire week before the Moto-ST race weekend. I didn’t know how I was going to make sure everything on the bike was gone through properly. Thank God for Gus, Joe, Jim and the entire Resurrection Racing crew. There was no way the boys were going to let me make my pro racing debut on a machine that was less than perfect. Gus told me not to worry; he would take care of everything. I want to take a step back again and tell the world what a friend and mentor Richard “Gus” Gans has been to me. To be honest, not only did Gus introduce me to motorcycle roadracing, he’s also overseen my own race program from day one. Honestly, I wouldn’t even have been in a position to get this Moto-ST ride if not for all the years he’s been helping me along. Gus lives in a household with 3 teenage daughters and his wife. Can anyone say “estrogen overload?” Sometimes, Gus’s only getaway is the garage. It allows him to fulfill his love of motorcycles and take a break from the constant craziness present in his household. I love his entire clan to death and consider them family. Still, when 4 women gang up it can be downright brutal at times. I won’t get into any detail to protect the innocent but those who are close know what I’m talking about. Gus and the rest of the Resurrection regulars took the time to fully prepare this Moto-ST machine for Road America while I was away for my job. I thank everyone who had their hands on the bike from the bottom of my heart. PRACTICE I was able to talk my boss into letting me get Thursday and Friday off prior to the race weekend. Thanks Rich, it was greatly appreciated! Because I hadn’t ridden Road America yet this year, I wanted to get a few laps around the track before the race to make sure I had all my reference points together. The Wednesday night before heading to the track was like a motorcycle version of The Gong Show! To begin with, the bike still wasn't quite ready. The stock master cylinder on my SV just wasn’t getting the job done. I don’t know if it needed new seals or what, but no matter how much I bled the system the master would not give me the good lever feel that I needed. I sure as hell wasn’t going to put up another 350 bucks for a Brembo at this point. I was already knocking on the door of 1000 dollars to make this race weekend happen, which was way, way, way over my budget. Tom, a NESBA Control Rider I knew, had a GSXR1000 master cylinder for the right price. The problem was that he lived all the way out in Bartlett, which was hours out of my way. Fortunately, Brian Wink, another friend who is also a NESBA CR, lives out that way. I asked Brian if he was heading to Road America that weekend. He said no but in the same breath asked me if I had a fork seal driver tool for an SV650. I told him, “Why yes I do and it’s even a custom Resurrection Racing made SV650 fork seal driver tool.” So get this! Wink went out to Bartlett from Barrington to get the master cylinder from Tom and then met me on the side of 294 to make the deal/exchange, whatever you want to call it. He gave me the master cylinder and I gave him the fork seal tool. Problem solved. Awesome! Thank you so much Wink. Before I even made it to Wink, there had been another rendezvous alongside the tollway. I'd needed to get my mountain bike from teammate Dave Vaugn so I'd have some way to get around the huge pits at Road America. A few weeks previously, we'd been racing at Blackhawk on a CCS weekend and Dave had survived a tremendous highside. By the time we'd figured out who was taking what stuff home and how we were going to get Vaughn back to Chicago from the hospital in Rockford, my bicycle had ended up in his trailer. Even though he wasn't exactly walking yet, Dave still made the effort to get the bike and meet me out by the highway as I headed for Wisconsin. It's great when your friends look out for you. As I drove on through the night, there came a point that I just couldn’t take it any longer. I was physically and mentally exhausted from the anticipation, not to mention getting ready and loaded up. I had to stop and get a hotel. There was just no way I was going to make Road America that night. I stopped at a Holiday Inn in Port Washington to get some shut eye, woke up early and put on the news. There were really bad thunderstorm and flood warnings all over central Wisconsin. Port Washington to Elkhart Lake is only a 20 or 30 mile trip but it took me almost an hour and a half to get there because it was storming so badly. This was probably the worst rain storm I’ve ever had to drive in. I finally made it out of the storm and on to Road America in my big old boat of a van. I arrived to find Mitch and his wife Dianna waiting for registration to open, looking like a pair of drowned rats. Everyone waiting in line was trying to smile but with so much rain, running our bikes in the practice trackday seemed like it would be both unproductive and risky. As we waited, the Pair of Nines team and owner Gary Nixon were hanging with us and shooting the bull. I also got to meet Jimmy Filice. I’d managed to snag Nixon’s and Springsteen’s autographs the year prior but this year I was actually going to be racing against them! It was totally cool to meet such famous riders and have them treat me like one of the guys. We were plagued by rain all day on Thursday during the test and tune sessions. Mitch convinced me not to take the bike out. He asked me if I knew the track and I said yes. Then he asked me if it was worth risking balling the bike up in a rainy practice session. We decided to wait for the Friday qualifying session. My main goal there was simply to make the field without risking the machine. Mission accomplished; I ended up qualifying ninth. The Race Mid Illini Motorsports usually enters 2 bikes. The first would be piloted by Mitch Stein and Mark Stiles, with the second machine ridden by Alan Federson and Jeff Purk. My converted street bike would be the team’s third entry and my co-racer would be Rod Mahr. The day was predicted to start dry but end with some really violent weather. Because the AMA is the AMA’s main concern, they rearranged the schedule to accommodate their qualifying sessions and our Moto-ST event was pushed to the last race of the day after Formula Extreme. Coming up to race time, the weather forecast was extremely sketchy. If I’d had to bet all the money in the world, I’d have wagered that the dark clouds on the horizon and the incoming brilliant reds and yellows on the weather radar meant that we’d be swimming as much as we’d be racing. It was a mad scramble to decide if we should run rain tires or DOTs, because at that point the pavement was not completely saturated. The decision was made that I would take the first stint on my bike. Moto-ST uses a rolling, NASCAR style start. Alan Federson and Mark Stiles had decided to start our team’s other two machines on DOT tires. We’d actually had the rear wheel off of my bike in the process of changing from a rain tire back to a DOT when it started pouring momentarily. I told Mitch to put the rear rain tire back on, so my bike went out set up for wet conditions. As the bikes lined up to start the race, it was apparent the pavement was partially drying but still had enough wet areas to justify rain tires. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed as the Pace Car peeled off down Pit Road and the pack roared toward Start/Finish line for the rolling start. I got into my zone. Green Flag! It was an absolutely insane scramble for everyone to find their position after the start. The rooster tails of the bikes ahead made it almost impossible to see where we were going. I specifically remember the entire sky lighting up with lightning as I took the outside wet line into Turn One and passed almost the entire field. Through Turn Two and  down the hill into Three I could see that the leader was Jimmy Filice aboard the Pair of Nines bike. My teammate Alan Federson and I were neck and neck, with Alan in second and me in third. This dice went on for about the first 30 minutes of the race. Working together, we were tugging each other around the race track. I would draft him and he would draft me as I tried to keep my rain tires wet in the drying conditions. Eventually, I began to pull away from Alan, stretching the gap to about ten seconds. Our Mid Illini Motorsports team had second and third in class virtually locked in at this point. To win an endurance race, you must endure. The team who spends the most time doing laps and the least time in the pits is going to win the race. Strategy and teamwork are as essential to success as having dependable bikes and fast riders. I’d showed up at Road America ready to ride my best race. The gang at Resurrection Racing had seen to it that my machine was up to the job. The one piece of the puzzle that seemed to be missing all weekend was teamwork. Don’t get me wrong. Every member of our team was there to do a good job and give it all they had. What we lacked was pre-planning and organization. All weekend I’d begged and pleaded for a team meeting. I also suggested repeatedly that we practice pit stops, if only because I was the new guy and didn’t want to make a mistake. We had literally hours of wasted time when we could have been doing this stuff but it never happened. I was told, “All you have to do is come in when we tell you and stop where we tell you. We’ll do the rest.” Our run for the podium came apart like a Keystone Cops routine. I saw what I thought was the pit signal for me to come in. The team claims that I screwed up because the signal was meant for Alan. OK, maybe I read the board wrong but if I was ahead of Alan by ten seconds, why did I even see it? If the board was for Alan, it should have gone up AFTER I was past. I guess that’s what happens when you try to signal three different bikes with the same two-foot-square pit board as they fly past at 140 mph in a rainstorm. The result was that Alan and I pitted together. When I came in, the team wasn’t ready for me and my co-rider Rod wasn’t even suited up. Aside from that, the team only had one quick-fill fuel can, so it was dumped into the other bike first and then had to be refilled before it could be used on mine! After all the yelling, cursing and embarrassment on pit lane, the result was that my bike had sat there for nearly two minutes, going from second place to the back of the field in the process  At this point, our race was never going to get better but could certainly get worse. Because of the weather-related schedule delays, race distance had been shortened. There was a very good chance that my SV would have gone the distance on one refueling stop. This hadn’t occurred to the team though. They were timing Rod, noting that he was running about two seconds per lap slower than I had been. Instead of just leaving him out there to finish the race, he was signaled back in so I could take over, even though my slightly quicker laps were unlikely to make up for the time it would take Rod to stop and hand the bike back over to me. Now our possible one-stop strategy had turned into a two-stop race. By rising to the challenge and using whatever means necessary, we’d managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of a podium finish.
I spent the rest of the race trying to gain back as much time as I possibly could. I wasn’t sure what position I was in but could see that I was gaining ground on my competitors slowly but surely. Much to everyone’s surprise, there had only been periodic sprinkles throughout the race, leaving the track mostly dry by the end. My bike’s rain tires were starting to get really shagged but with my dirt bike experience I was still able to slide, wiggle and jiggle my way around the track at a pretty good pace. Coming up to the finish, I got into a great dice. I was running neck and neck with another rider on an air-cooled Ducati. We were passing each other back and forth repeatedly during the final two laps, working each other’s draft and fighting for every corner on the brakes. I got underneath the other rider in the final turn. Coming up the hill I could feel him tucked up behind me and trying to get me on the draft. Just before the start finish line he swung out to overtake me on the right. I could see the Ducati rider bouncing fiercely on his handle bars trying to get his front tire ahead of mine. I started bouncing just as hard as he was and it was by less than a wheel-length that I beat him across the start finish line for what turned out to be tenth place. This awesome battle was the most fun I had in the entire race. It’s just too bad we blew the pit stop earlier because I know we could have finished a lot better. After the race, I felt like the team didn’t want to have anything to do with me. It seemed as if they were disappointed in my performance and blamed me for that disastrous first pit stop. There’s no doubt that I was upset by how the team had been managed. My pocketbook was cashed out and I’d spent tons more money than originally anticipated. Not only had I paid my own way, I’d supplied the team with my motorcycle as well. Did they think that I’d invested all that money and risked my own bike just for the opportunity to make their team look bad? As far as I could tell, I’d solved every problem, spent every dollar and achieved every goal required to get my bike and me to the starting grid and had put in a podium-worthy performance, only to see it wasted in the pits. Honestly, I was having a hard time feeling guilt over the situation. Looking at the bright side, just having the chance to participate and finishing the race with both the motorcycle and me in one piece was a blessing of its own. All my pals from http://www.chicagolandsportbikes.com/ had braved the rain and shown up to see me race, so at least I'd put in a good run for them. What made me happiest was the knowledge that my really good friends were all there rooting for me the entire time. Not only did the gang help me prep the bike, they made it to the track and watched me race. My good friend Gus even helped in the pits on Saturday during qualifying, which made me proud. Now that the race was over, I couldn’t wait to pack all my things up and go hang with the boys. I helped Team Illini pack up some, hit the showers and headed down to the campground. That’s where I wanted to be. All in all it had been a great weekend, I know I could have done better but the experience will last a lifetime. I lived a dream by finally getting to race as a pro, both for me and for my father. Thanks Dad. I hope I made you proud.
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