A bittersweet race weekend
2024 PromoRACC Catalunya Cup Race Weekend #1
This was a bittersweet race weekend. We arrived at Móra d'Ebre on Friday evening. I drove the race van and Jessica drove the motorhome. We set up camp at the circuit next to our crew of Alvaro and Sergi. It was the perfect spot, overlooking the track and the pits.
It was cold and windy. Our motorhome, from the great people at SBD Caravaning, was awesome. We had the motorhome and our race van and upon arrival I quickly set up camp. After a lot of negotiation regarding which kid slept where, we finally went to sleep.
Saturday morning, I was up very early. I took our Belgian Malinois Jordan for a walk in the olive groves around the circuit just as the sun began to rise. The ETG Racing truck arrived and the race weekend started.
The track conditions were dry and extremely windy. Windy enough that we changed the gearing on the Ohvale 160 from 17x32 to 17x33 in order to better counteract the extreme wind harassing the front straight. Sebastian was running in the 1:03s and then we made some adjustments to the bike and reviewed the lines. We got the times down into the 1:01s which was slightly off of the predicted podium pace. However, with the strong winds, the 1:01 was probably equivalent to a 1:00 or perhaps even a high 0:59.
The race day forecast called for rain. So Alvaro and I got the extra wheels over to the ETG mechanics for rain tires.
Zoë was training on the Ariane Moto K2Re 2.5 electric moto. She normally rides a Polini, but for the Catalunya Cup championship, she’s going to be racing in the PromoRACC-E 2.5 electric category. That electric bike is extremely heavy. It’s about three times heavier than than her normal 2-stroke Polini. She was fairly slow at first with no confidence in the corners due to the extra weight and different power delivery of the electric. However, she was having a great time and for a six-year old racer-girl — that’s all that matters to us!
I received text message in the late morning from my step-mom. My dad has been really sick for the past several months and just two days earlier, we were informed that my dad had less than a week to live. I ignored the message to call her. It couldn’t be good news. Especially since it was 3 or 4 in the morning in Texas.
I stayed trackside watching my stopwatches and encouraging Sebastian and Zoë. I didn’t want to talk to anyone and I knew, in the back of my mind, that the news from my step-mom couldn’t have been good. I was 5000 miles away. I was helpless in the situation, even if I was only 1 mile away.
Sebastian, Sofi, Oliver, and Zoë got to talk to their grandpa on FaceTime a few days prior. My dad couldn’t really speak, but we could understand, “I love you guys.” The kids talked to him telling them about the upcoming race weekend and how they hoped he could feel better soon.
That was the last time any of us talked to him.
Between sessions, I went to the track cafe and finally called my step-mom.
My dad had died that morning, peacefully in his sleep in a comfortable room in a hospice facility in which they moved him the day before. Allegedly he didn’t feel any pain. I’d like to think that’s true.
Jessica had already spoken to my step-mom, but I hadn’t seen her for a few hours since I was in the pits and trackside while she was cooking the lunch up in the motorhome. When I saw Jessica we didn’t say much. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel at that moment. We hugged and I didn’t talk about it. I got back to the pits and continued on as if nothing happened. I needed to not have time to think about it and being in the middle of a race weekend pit during Free Practice was the best place for that.
That evening, I put the rain tires on the bike with Alvaro. I opened a bottle of wine. Poured a glass for me and Jessica and sat outside in the cold under our Beta Tools work lights on the artificial grass I brought for our camp “backyard.” Leo’s dad stopped by and we listened to much on our outdoor speaker and I poured a glass of wine for him as well.
Oliver and Sebastian borrowed my phone to open a night sky app. They were enjoying looking at the stars and identifying the constellations. I pointed out Orion and his belt and sword. They seemed to like that.
The moon was full. The night was cold and spectacularly clear.
I was sitting in the camp chair with my wine, listening to Sky & Sand from Paul Kalkbrenner and I saw a brilliant streaking light in the sky. A meteor. A shooting star. And, despite seeing dozens over the years, this was the brightest one I’ve ever seen. I called Jessica over from inside the motorhome.
“Oh wow, a shooting star!” I said. “The brightest I’ve ever seen.”
“Maybe it was a message from the person that created the Rocket nickname,” Jessica said.
I still hadn’t told kids yet of their grandpa’s death. I didn’t want to spoil their race weekend. So Jessica was talking in code. My dad was the one that first called Oliver “The Rocket.” Oliver got that nickname because when he was a baby first learning to crawl, he was literally one of the fastest crawlers ever. Interestingly, Oliver’s middle name is my dad’s first name: Dwight. Sebastian’s middle name is Ray, same as me and my middle name is the same as my dad’s.
It made me a little bit happier to think that the only shooting star I’ve seen in a very long time just happened to be that night. A full moon night at a track deep in Catalonia.
On race morning, I got up early. The rain was hypnotic, pattering on the roof of the motorhome. It was completely silent outside aside from the rain. I got out of bed and walked Jordan again. Soon, Alvaro was up and we got the rain tires installed on the Ohvale and got our gear set up in the pit.
Q1 (Qualifying 1) was a mess. Sebastian had a crash, ending up in the gravel. But, it wasn’t gravel. It’s was think mud. It looked like he spent the day doing motocross. We had to replace a fairing, one of the handlebars, and a few other parts. We had to get this done before Q2 started since Q1 was a bust and we didn’t get any lap time on the board. Zoë’s electric moto wasn’t ready in time for her to get a complete lap in Q1 either. The people that were providing the moto for her were in charge of the maintenance and they didn’t have time to get the rain tires on quickly enough.
So we’re 0-2 in Q1. No lap times for either Zoë or Sebastian.
Q2 went much better.
Sebastian was a beast and got P7 in the PromoRACC-1 race, just a few tenths from a front row grid. He was on the second row! This was huge. Zoë ended up P3 in her qualifying.
The start of the PromoRACC-1 Ohvale 160cc race.
Amazing job for both of them. Considering we’ve only been in Catalonia a few months and everyone else we were racing against has been racing and training for years in Spain — to qualify so well was amazing.
The rain kept pouring when Race 1 for the Ohvale 160s finally began. Sebastian got a reliable, but not great start but was able to survive turn one. It was slippery and wet but Sebastian is just insane awesome on the brakes. He was able to overtake on the back straight entering into the final turn of the first lap. He was in P5 for most of the race until crashing in one of the later laps. He remounted and fought back to finish P6.
In race two, it was a bit more chaotic, there were several crashes and the speeds were getting much faster as the racing lines began to dry out. Sebastian finished P9 and was overall P6 for the race weekend, earning 12 championship points. Considering the tough conditions and the difficulty, Sebastian had a spectacular race.
In Zoë’s two races, she got P3 in both races. She began to develop confidence and her lap times steadily decreased. She made the podium! The first Spanish podium for Dear Racing!
Zoë Dear getting her first-ever podium racing in the Electric 2.5 category at the Catalunya Cup.
Just prior to the race, Zoë saw that they had put the #69 on her bike (which is her race number.) She was so excited — she said before the race, “I’m going to race for Nicky Hayden because he is my favorite racer and he died and I’m also going to race for Grandpa Dwight because he is very sick.” She didn’t know that her grandpa had died already. It was hard for me not to cry when she declared that she’d get on the podium before the race.
Great racing, tough weekend.
I’m looking forward to the next race weekend which is March 10, 2024 in the town of Vic at the Circuit Osona.