Bonneville Day 5 “Rookie Rumble”

After waiting three days for the salt to dry sufficiently, we are finally racing!

Smitty is a “rookie” rider at Bonneville so we began at the 1.0-mile rookie course.

We ran an oxygenated gas, chosen to make up for the loss of ambient oxygen due to altitude, which turned out to be less than ideal. While we were warming up The Red Baron in line, it didn’t sound as clean as usual. It stalled twice before getting warm enough to idle…

Smitty achieved 115 MPH at the 1.0 mile which was a good achievement considering the course was rough enough to rattle the front cylinder head temperature (CHT) probe to the point that it failed. Thankfully, the rear CHT probe was still reading; the rear cylinder tends to run hotter anyway.

The salt build-up on the tires was significant! It was a good thing we chose to remove the front fender so the salt wouldn’t lock the front wheel. The Red Baron threw a salty “rooster tail” during the turn-off that splattered a salt stripe which needed to be cleaned before the next run on the long course!