The racing season has come to a close throughout most of the country, but in Southern California we still have a couple months of warm weather left. The Willow Springs Motorcycle Club races 11 months out of the year. The penultimate round of the series, and last of the three held at the 1.8 mile long “Streets of Willow” track, was on Oct 17-18. The San Diego BMW Motorcycles team showed up with a variety of machines and a lot of excitement as the points race has tightened up significantly.
At the start of the weekend, Gary Orr, Co-owner of San Diego BMW Motorcycles and self professed “Old Guy - Fast Bike” racer was one point behind in the Formula-40 class championship and a few points ahead in the Top Rookie class. Formula-40 is literally a “run what you brung” class, with the only rule being that all competitors are at least 40 years old. It may seem like a contradiction for one person to be leading this class and the Top Rookie overall class, but Gary had not held a racing license in more than 15 years, and as such was forced to start over as a rookie and in the novice classes. This has not held him back however, as even though he missed scoring points in the first few rounds of the season. He has quickly moved up to the Pro class with WSMC.
This weekend started out a little rough though. The team acquired a new “back-up” bike, which took a little longer to get prepped than expected. This resulted in the team arriving at the track on Saturday morning, skipping Friday’s practice. After a one lap first practice discovered a problem with the “A-Bike” it was decided to swap the suspension with the new “back-up bike”. This meant Gary missed most of the morning. Unfortunately, Saturday afternoon “pro-practice” rounds were shortened by a barrage of first-lap crashes; none of which were ours. This meant Gary had less than one full session of practice on the new bike all day. Sunday morning was not much better as one of the two practice rotations were cancelled due to crashes and ambulance availability.
Luckily, Gary didn’t need a lot of practice, as this is a track he knows well and one that really suits his riding style. Formula-40 was race five and Gary was forth through turn one, but second through turn two after taking two positions on the brakes entering the second turn. “Following Ken Kramer #4 for a lap was a lot of fun”, said Orr. “Ken is not a regular in this class, and the last time I raced with him, he passed me twice. Once on the start and then after receiving a Black flag for jumping the start.” Gary has gone a lot faster since then, and one lap was all that he was planning on following. He tried him up the inside in Turn one, and Ken slammed the door shut forcing Gary to let off. “I knew I had lots of motor on him, and was just as fast through the technical parts of the track, so I was not worried about being able to pass. I just wasn’t sure where I would get by him. Towards the end of lap three I set him up on the back straight. I used the motor of the S1000RR to force myself into the single line chicane before he could get the line and this time Ken was forced to let off.” From there, Gary was able to pull a second a lap finishing with a 3 second margin, and resetting the Formula-40 lap record for this track.
Race 8 for the weekend was Open Superbike, and Gary got off the line in forth place behind #91 Scott Tillery, #3 Chris Duran, and #48 Reno Karimian. Worried that Scott might get away from him while he fought with Chris and Reno, Gary made a couple of aggressive passes on the first lap and followed Scott closely across the line at the end of lap one. Once again, Gary used the power of the S1000RR to nip passed Scott and his GSXR 1000 on the back straight and took the lead before the end of lap two. Chris Followed Gary past Scott, but could not catch up to the San Diego BMW Motorcycles sponsored S1000RR, eventually finishing three seconds back of Gary.
With one Race weekend left, Gary now has a 5 point lead in the Formula-40 championship, a 19 point lead in the Top-Rookie Overall, and has won the Solo GTO championship (a five round endurance race which ended last month). Not bad for an “Old Guy”, good thing he has a Fast Bike.