“The Battles”

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2025

It had been two months since my first MotoAmerica Super Hooligan round at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. By all accounts, it had been an incredibly successful race weekend, capped off with my first top-15 finish and championship points. If I’m being completely honest, I had very mixed feelings going into this next round based on how well I did in the previous one. On the one hand, I had gained some confidence about what I was capable of in this class based on my performance, but I also worried that it may have been a fluke, and the pressure to pull it off again was weighing heavily on me. But my favorite new motto is “pressure is a privilege,” so I did what I could to override the self-defeating thoughts and tried to give myself the hard-won credit I deserved.

Even though it had been a couple of months since the last MotoAmerica round, I had several opportunities to practice and keep my skills sharp. A couple of track day weekends and a regional club race gave me plenty of seat time in preparation for this next round. In fact, just two weeks before this round, I brought my Super Hooligan MT-09 to the Ridge Motorsports Park in Shelton, Washington, where I would be racing this weekend in MotoAmerica. Good thing, too, since I had never ridden the Ridge, and it was not an easy track to learn! The Ridge is known for how incredibly technical it is, with lots of elevation changes, blind crests – both up and down – and probably the scariest, most challenging section of any track I’ve ridden, euphemistically referred to as “The Waterfall,” or “The Little Cork Screw.” This segment of turns at the very end of the 2.47-mile circuit starts with a super sharp, off-camber, steep downhill left turn, followed by a more flowing, down-slope right-hander over asphalt that has been pockmarked by water that seeps up through the surface after heavy rain, and finally into a tight left-hand sweeper that sends you back onto the front straight. More about the role that this tricky twist of turns played in both of my races, later…

The long, full-day drive to Washington started at 4:30 am on Wednesday of race week. It was a pleasant drive, mostly because Shanea, my girlfriend/best friend/ride-or-die/soul mate/and every other silly, romantic, cliché term of endearment, and also our Team Captain, was along for the ride. She wasn’t able to join me at the Road Atlanta round because she was supporting my teammate (and her daughter), Hailey, at a regional race that weekend, so I was incredibly excited to have her company and support for this one.

We arrived at the Ridge Motorsports Park that evening and parked our toy hauler in the staging area, next to the Rahal Ducati Moto team rig, then made a light dinner and tried to get to bed early in anticipation of the busy weekend to come.