Preparations for the 2016 Begins Now!

Actually preparations for the 2016 road racing season began literally the week after the last round, but we have been insanely lazy over the cold winter months. Recently we have sent out our suspension for refresh, had team meetings on sponsors, team color-ways and rounds to be contested during the season, t-shirt designs amongst a myriad of other little things. When I think about the overall task it doesn’t seem so bad but when I break it into little bits and pieces it seems insanely daunting, kind of reversed isn’t it?

Checking off each box as we go.

First off of the list was getting the suspension out of the way by way of Pete Kates over at GMD Computrack Boston. We have been dealing with Pete & the GMD crew for years now and wouldn’t trust anyone else with our suspension, but it also seems that a lot of other people feel the same way! That means we need to get a head start with this so off went our forks, shocks and steering dampers to get their yearly tune-up. Luckily he got around to our suspension quick and we had them back in our possession a few weeks afterwards. Included in each tune-up is always a well documented list of parts replaced, pricing and labor as well as the most important base line settings. We use this information to tune for the season as conditions and tires play factors into each round.

Suspension travels well, especially when there is a lot.

One of the important things we wanted this season was to represent our racing, MSGRacing, at each round with team apparel. I have been designing a few mock-ups for team shirts so we had to dial that in for ourselves and of course our sponsors/supporters. One problem I encountered was that I wanted to get a solid list of sponsors for the season before we make these shirts so that our cost, racing on a budget here, is as low as possible with a high quality product the first time around.

Rough drafts are good to look at until you can think of a better one.

Racing and crashing goes hand in hand and basically the entire team had offs during the entirety of last season which sucked. We decided this year we would prep ourselves with a box of spares so we would never be out of say a toe peg, or a foot rest, or an engine cover skid plate. Preparations is key!

A table full of spares, a lot of spares. #WoodcraftTechnologies

With the crashes last year we also updated a couple of parts on our bikes to perform not only better on the grid but better on the slide. Everything from hand guards to tire warmers to key switch elimination kits was thrown at our bikes.

Often this is how our bikes sit during the off season.

Bare bones and all makes you notice things you need to update and swap out.

Black, primer, crashed gray, white, this was our team colors, err rather lack thereof, last year but this year is different! We’re working with my brother and his GoodRideGarage brand to have them paint our MSGRacing team color-way for the year: Yamaha 60th Anniversary Yellow. Kind of funny when you think about it because Pedro’s bike is a Honda, but he is being a good sport and going with the yellow scheme, that’s a teammate!

Armour Bodies SBK kit ready to get painted!

February just started and things are already getting kind of crazy. Coming in the next few weeks are new leathers from our new sponsor for the season, but I will keep a tight lip on that!