I was running a 4 hour endurance yesterday with another guy and we decided to try on a set of Michelins (because the S2s we had on for practice had held up nicely and I am starting to worry about the lastability of Pirellis in long races).

We ran practice and I was slow as shit, but I had never run the track before (at least not backwards) plus the suspension wasn't setup right for the new tires (and we had no time to fix it). So, in any case, my teammate started the race and started going pretty quick, then I take over and soon start running respectable lap times. Teammate goes out again, and in a few laps, it starts drizzling (they had predicted 40% chance of rains).

Thing is, we had decided, before the race, that we would stick to the same tires, even if it started raining. And boy, what a decision. Bikes were dropping like flies in the first 20 minutes of the rain (especially by the pit-area, where there is a 4-corner slow-speed chicane). Then Mark (my teammate) came in with a broken brake lever -- a guy on rain tires tried to pass up on the inside and ended up in a little scrap with Mark. Course, he complained about the track being superslick and I said he was welcome to stay out as long as he wanted to.

After another 20 minutes, or so, he came back in and I took over...
Wow, what a hoot. I was able to pull some time off my laps, but I couldn't see anything because my visor was all fogged up and the mid-corner grip was highly inconsistent. It was cool being able to spin up the rear wheel in 4th gear on the straights, though. It certainly made life a lot more interesting. I managed not to crash, despite the bike's best efforts at trying to. Apparently several guys in the pits had fun watching my several slides through the rattlesnake.

We had made our way into 4th in class for a while, but in the end only managed 5th. We had a couple unexpected pit-stops (the broken brake lever, and a loose clip-on) which probably would have been enough to get into 3rd or 4th, but who cares, I had a blast. We weren't in contention for the title, anyway, so as long as the bike is fine, I'm happy.

Anyway, I thought I'd share my little experience.

Was that you that was out there in the last half-hour of the race? My stint was the last one, in the rain, I think I passed that number 12 bike once while I was out there. I had a bunch of close calls too and finally went down in the richochet. I slid on my butt to a stop, picked the bike up out of the mud(still running) and remounted to finish. We ended up 15th overall and 4th in class. We did exactly the same thing - gambled on DOTs, hoping it would stop raining. We had rains mounted on another set of rims but at first it looked like that storm was going to blow over. Oh well, I had fun anyway. Too bad I was sore for the sprints today.

Yep, that was probably me. I ran slow, then faster, then slow again (after way too many close calls pretty much everywhere on the track). After a while, I just wanted to not crash.