INSIDE PASS
Red White and Buell Meets her Pilot!
Author: Rob Oliva
My first impression of the TrackdayMag.com Buell XB12R project bike
The Venue: Barber Motorsports Park near Birmingham, Alabama, is a place of good vs. evil for me. In 2005 I attended CCS/ASRA races there for the first time. While my teammates loved the track, I struggled with confidence issues and never did come into my own, posting lackluster results and acquiring a  general dislike for the idea of traveling there for future events. In 2007 I qualified for my first AMA Pro Racing event at Barber. Despite my best efforts to crash my motorcycle that weekend, we ended up in one piece and with our team’s first Pro weekend safely under our belt. In 2008 editor K3 and I again joined forces to face off against AMA competitors for our first event of the season. The Barber lawn gnomes crept out of their well-manicured hiding places and hexed our efforts, their evil spells surely contributing to an endless series of bike troubles and a pre-qualifying crash. The final result was that we failed to qualify for the event, something that hadn’t happened since we’d first made the show at Barber in 2007. Now, with 2009 well under way, K3 and I decided to sit out the AMA Pro opener at Daytona. We would instead go back to Barber for a NESBA track day weekend. Our plan was to shake down the Buell, get some much needed setup information and spend time working together in a setting which would be devoid of the white-hot pressure of an AMA round intensifying our every action. In my opinion, Barber owed us one. The Conditions: Having driven through blinding rain and dodged between tornadoes on our way to Barber, we didn’t know what to expect come Saturday morning. The whole place was soaking wet when we arrived and the rain continued throughout Saturday. Although the track was wet, the rain turned to more of a mist around mid morning, allowing a semi dry line to form around the course. At this point, we opted to finally pull the Buell out of the trailer. Having never ridden the bike before, I was a bit nervous about facing the mixed conditions on DOT tires when most riders were still circulating on full wet race tires. Still, we’d come a long way to run this event and the Buell was one of our top priorities for the trip. Patchy pavement be damned; I was eager to at least get a sense of what the bike felt like.
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