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Installment #1:

D.A.Y.A.M. Racing Team 2016 Southern Ontario Associates of Racing Lightweight Endurance Season Recap
Season Prep:
The DAYAM Race Team had a fairly good 2016 season (2 wins and 2 3rds) with our 250 Ninja, so the bike was already in good shape for the 2017 season. However, I have a difficult time refraining from constant modifying of my racebikes so I continued that habit of small changes. The suspension was spot-on, with no adjustments needed for all of 2016. The biggest change was tires. I really liked the Pirelli Supercorsas that we used in 2016, but I was very tempted to try the Alpha 13’ takeoffs so I bought a couple of sets from Bruce on the Ninjette forum. Moving to the 150 rear meant a change to the 4” 300 Ninja rim that I had intended for use on my FZR400 Chassis/R3 motor project bike. I was a little concerned about the weight increase due to the larger tire and the wider rim, but it wasn’t quite as awful as I thought. Comparing the weights A13/Ninja rear combo with my Pirelli rain/250 Ninja rear combo showed about a three pound increase when going to the bigger tire and rim. Not as bad as I thought, but still significant.
In 2016, most of the weight savings had been accomplished which resulted in the bike weighing 285lb. For 2017 I continued to pare weight of the frame and other parts as I could with one of the bigger weight losses coming from machining off unnecessary metal that remained from the keyswitch mount on the upper triple clamp.
Round One SOAR GTL 3 Hour: 84 laps- 3rd in class, 15th overall
Going into round one, I knew I couldn’t go to the race (due to a preplanned camping trip with my wife Amy) but I wanted to make sure the team was represented. Otherwise, it would have been extremely difficult to win the championship due to the SOAR points structure which makes it difficult to win if you miss a round. So I worked hard at getting the bike ready and organizing our rider lineup for the first race. My friends Todd and Chris were in for another season but then it looked like Todd couldn’t go, then Chris calls me about two weeks before the race and tells me he broke his throttle hand playing basketball. I was pretty bummed thinking that our season was already over before it started as far as the championship was concerned but we recruited another rider in Craig Braymiller and then Todd was able to go. I had trouble sourcing the chain I wanted and it came down to the last minute, so I had to just get any 520 chain I could locally. I had Craig pick one up from a dealership before he came over to pick up the bike. So installed the chain which was probably two pounds heavier than the chain had the previous year, then Craig hitched up my trailer with all the gear and gas (more on the gas later…) to his truck and left. It was a bit strange handing off my bike to an almost complete stranger, but Chris and Todd knew Craig so I was ok with him taking my bike while I went to the Thousand Islands with my wife.
Todd and Chris were doing fine in the race with my brother-in-law Brad helping as pit boss. They did rider swaps every half hour and threw in a couple of gallons of gas in the bike with an hour to go. Team DAYAM was leading by five laps when things began to go south. About ten minutes after the fuel stop and rider swap the bike began to run like crap and wouldn’t accept any throttle without falling on its face. Todd brought the bike into the pits and they tried to figure out what was wrong. The guys weren’t able to figure it out and get back out on the track, but we still wound up with 3rd place in class.
Note to self: Don’t give your teammates old race gas from last year to put in the bike! I suspected bad gas, but it took me a couple of days to confirm that it was true. Oh well, 3rd place wasn’t bad all things considered.
On to Round two.....