Steve Metz finished well after a long and trying season. He sums it all up in his end-of-season write-up. Stay tuned for next season...

This year may have had 7 rounds, but it was a long season for me. Coming off of a pretty successful 2009 season riding my ’04 749R, I decided to move up to the ’09 1198s this year. I suspected there would be a transition period going from the “little” bike to the big bike, but I had no idea what was in store for me. I didn’t care – I wanted to step up to the challenge and see if I could go faster.

After the first three rounds, I was sitting in fourth in the points and had written off a run at a season podium for Open Twins… until GoGo called me out in one of his write-ups and declared that the battle for third place in Open Twins was on. I looked at the points, and said “oh... there *is* a chance...”.

A few rounds later, I had picked up a couple more podiums and had moved into third place ahead of GoGo in the championship. Then came round 6. GoGo (with help from a lately very “in-form” Nick Hayman) delivered a crushing late-season points blow, beating me by two positions. This meant I’d have to beat him by two positions at the final round in order to get ahead of him in the points. The competition would be fierce. James Randolph was returning from injury and charging hard, Pat Blackburn is always strong at Thunderhill and would be eager to beat me after a race-long battle at the previous round, Nick Hayman was coming off Round 6 with a large personal best at Sears, and surely would have momentum behind him. Then there was GoGo. After his bike was totaled in the previous round, he had somehow pulled a phoenix and produced an RC8R. Here’s a guy who has been a class champion, riding 1:53’s at Thunderhill on what was essentially a dirt bike, now showing up with some serious artillery. Yikes. I knew he’d have a challenge getting the bike set up quickly, but if anyone could do it – it would be GoGo and his team.

Race weekend
The Round 7 weekend started for me late night Wednesday trying to diagnose my van's starting issues (a wise man once told me “in order to win, one must first show up”).

This van monkey business was followed by another late night Thursday because of loading, getting to Willows, finishing up some work stuff, etc.

Then came Friday. Practice was awesome. I was doing easy 1:53's in the second practice. At the last round, this was my race pace – having dipped into the 52’s only for a few laps. I sorted out some suspension stuff. Life was good, or so I thought.

In the first session in the afternoon, the motor blew. I heard a loud “pop” and experienced a sudden loss of power. I felt sick. I pushed the bike back to the pits. After a couple hours of trying to diagnose, we got some advice from Nick Hayman to check the belts. We pulled the covers and saw some ugliness. We loaded up the bike and headed back to San Francisco. I worked on it until about 12:30am, and the team mechanic, Drew, worked until about 2:30am. He ended up sleeping in the back of my van at the shop.

Saturday morning.
Drew and I met Scott at 6:30am and went through the motor and finished diagnosing and putting together a game plan. My valves were bent, my exhaust cam was toast, one piston was messed up, and one set of con rod bearings was toast. Good thing I happened to have purchased an extra set of complete heads and pistons that had come into the shop on Wednesday (I remember telling the guy "no hurry"... thankfully he shipped them promptly). Also a good thing I took him up on the offer to throw in the stock pistons and cylinders (initially I had said "no, that's okay... I don't need those"). Scott and Drew replaced the heads, while I tried to help where I could. Scott gave me a one-time "emergency" pass and did the con-rod bearings without splitting the cases. After they worked for about 7 hours straight, I loaded up the bike and drove back to Thunderhill. We got back to the track around 4:30. On the drive up to the track, I thanked Drew multiple times. He said, “No sweat, now just do your part tomorrow.”

Sunday morning.
We got the bike to the dyno at 8:00 for last-minute "emergency" mapping session. I had 3 ideas of how to fix the map, and we were going to spend about 20 minutes on 3 attempts to get a decent map. I had a buddy come by to give me a 20 minute warning before my session, so we could get the bike back to my pits, slap on a fresh (warm) rear and I'd head out with a cold front tire. Time would be tight, but if we stuck to the plan, we could pull it off. Well, that plan got f'ed because about 20 minutes into mapping, my throttle cable broke. Even worse, I knew I didn't have a spare with me.
When I stepped out of the dyno room to call Drew (who had been working on prepping my backup bike), and I discovered the track was shut down.... for a RAIN DELAY! This was a huge blessing for me -- it gave us PRECIOUS time to get the bike up and running and still catch practice.

I ran around the pits and tracked down a spare set of cables and a spare tube (special thanks to Siggy for the throttle cables and to Pat for the throttle tube). The cables required a special clip that we didn't have in order to hold them in place on the throttle body assembly, so we jimmied a solution with safety wire. Good thing that isn't an important safety part…

Open Twins was my first race of the day and race #3, so I had no choice but to go with what I had.

I lined up for the start, and (as usual) got a mediocre start. 3rd on the grid, I was 6th heading into turn 2. I was 7th heading into turn 3, but then Nick Hayman (who had just passed me) ended up crashing in turn 3. I came close to getting tangled up with him, but held my line and drove past the crash. At this point I considered "I'm guaranteed no worse than 4th in the championship, maybe I just take it easy with this hastily-assembled motor". Then I thought about the effort Scott and Drew put in, and had a flashback of a few of the motor teardowns over the season, and said "no fucking way -- I'm going after GoGo and Pat!" Before I could get there, though, I first had to get past Chase McFarland on his Buell. Chase had held me up at previous races and allowed folks to check out on me. I said "not today." I passed him out of turn 6, getting on the gas hard and wheelie’ing past him. Next up was Pat Blackburn on his 1098R and then Gogo on his RC8R.

Pat got past GoGo on the back straight before the end of the lap (I think). I noticed I was able to close much of the gap between these two on the straights, but they had gapped me so much on the first half-lap of the race that I wasn't close enough to do anything and could only sit and watch from behind. I couldn't let Pat get away because I needed to beat GoGo by two places in order to pass him in the championship.

I closed in on GoGo heading into turn 2, and began nibbling away at the remaining lead over me. I finally got close by the end of the second lap. I got a good run on him out of turn 13, heading down the back straight. As I closed in I could see he was braking early and his bike looked unstable. I thought about making a risky move to pass going into 14. Then I remembered his last Thunderhill writeup on Barf with a picture of one of the guys in his crew with a sad look on his face and the caption "Sonny P. growing tired of being passed on the front straight". Since I knew I had the motor on him, I decided to wait and pass him going up the front straight – one more for old times’ sake . I came past him almost before we got past the rumble strips on the exit of 15. I reflected for a moment when he had his whole crew come over to my pit to hand me a "tiger head on a platter" after the last round, taking pictures of me to include in his write-up. I smiled to myself in my helmet.

Part one of my two-part plan was complete. Now I needed to get past Pat in order to move in front of GoGo for the season. I settled in to a good rhythm and found myself close enough to make a move by the end of the fourth lap. Heading up the front straight I had a run on Pat. He stayed to the left, presumably to discourage an "inside" pass. This was unfortunate, since I missed the opportunity to give him a blast of the Double Dog megaphone exhaust. I made a "tidy" pass on the right as we approached turn one and held a very tight line to discourage Pat from trying to come back past on the inside. I put my head down and ground out two laps from there and was able to stay ahead of Pat.

I wasn't seeing my pit signals, so I was pretty worried. If GoGo came with me and got back past Pat, I would not pass him in the championship. After I crossed the checkered flag in third place, I went through turn one and looked over my left shoulder to see how they had finished. I felt a cold dagger in my heart as I only saw GoGo's bike approaching turn 1. I shouted "FUCK!..." in my helmet. Then I looked over my right shoulder and saw Pat Blackburn was RIGHT there. I then shouted "... yeah!!!" I realized I had gotten the best of GoGo for the season. I screamed my head off the rest of the lap. My voice is still hoarse. I even cranked a nice big ol' wheelie up the back straight past my pit area when I saw some of my pitmates watching.

I felt like I had just won the championship. After everything I had to deal with for the weekend, the team had overcome. After everything I had gone through for the season. It was starting to wash over me. I returned to the pits to a very warm greeting from the team and pitmates. I learned that Randolph had beaten Siglin, so James passed me in the points and I finished 3rd for the season behind Siglin and Randolph. So I finished behind two of the elite racers in the club. I think I can live with that.

The rest of the day was uneventful. Afraid of killing my motor, I ran the 749R in OpenGP and diced it out with a few guys on Gixxer 1000s. This put me at 16th for the season. I ran Open Superbike at the end of the day. A crappy start killed my chance of getting away with the lead pack and finishing 5th in the race, which is what I needed to move up a position in the championship. I ended up 7th for the season in Open Superbike in my first season in the class. I was pretty happy with the result and glad to be starting from the 2nd row instead of around 30th position, where I began the season lo' so many months ago at Buttonwillow.

What a year!